{"id":13455,"date":"2026-02-15T02:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T02:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/13455\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T02:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T02:01:07","slug":"defiant-denmark-challenges-us-on-olympic-ice-with-hockey-as-the-motivation-not-greenland-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/13455\/","title":{"rendered":"Defiant Denmark challenges US on Olympic ice with hockey as the motivation, not Greenland"},"content":{"rendered":"

MILAN (AP) \u2014 Forget the \u201cGreenland Derby\u201d<\/a> talk. It was just team spirit, hard work and plenty of heart.<\/p>\n

That’s how Denmark’s players say they took the fight to the United States in hockey at the Winter Olympics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Faced with gaps in skill and experience, Denmark responded with good old-fashioned hard work and took the lead twice. That alone wasn’t enough<\/a> in a 6-3 loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s what represents Denmark, to always work hard,\u201d said Nick Olesen, who scored the opening goal in a first period which ended 2-1 as Denmark threatened an upset.<\/p>\n

\u201dEverybody is playing with their heart and their feelings on the outside. You can really see that this national team means a lot for everybody,” captain Jesper Jensen Aabo said, praising his team for starting fast and blocking shots.<\/p>\n

As for the strained relationship between the U.S. and Denmark, \u201cwe didn\u2019t even mention it\u201d within the team, Jensen Aabo said. \u201cWe just wanted to win a hockey game against a world-class team. We didn\u2019t need extra fire to fire us up. We were ready for the game even though there\u2019s stuff going around in the real world, so that\u2019s nothing that affected us at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

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There was a Greenlandic flag<\/a> in the stands \u2014 not that the Danish players noticed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t see it, but that was nice,” Jensen Aabo said. “So hopefully they supported us.”<\/p>\n

Greenland’s complex ties to Denmark \u2014 it’s self-governing<\/a> and many locals favor independence \u2014 mean support isn’t always clear-cut. The fans holding the flag weren’t Greenlanders, either, but supporters of the Latvian team.<\/p>\n

Denmark dressed just three NHL players for the game against the U.S., while Olesen plays in the Czech league, Jensen Aabo plays in Austria and others in Germany, Finland and Sweden.<\/p>\n

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Denmark’s most experienced NHL player, center Lars Eller of the Ottawa Senators, praised the \u201cawesome\u201d Danish fans and said the contest on the ice was a pure hockey game.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously we see the news and you\u2019re aware of what\u2019s going on,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I think today and the time we spent in the (Olympic) Village, it\u2019s all about sports, it was all about hockey. Two hockey teams facing each other today.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP Winter Olympics: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN (AP) \u2014 Forget the \u201cGreenland Derby\u201d talk. It was just team spirit, hard work and plenty of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[26,57,9380,10154,5479,8247,9369,10181,2739],"class_list":{"0":"post-13455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-greenland","8":"tag-denmark","9":"tag-greenland","10":"tag-hockey-game","11":"tag-jesper-jensen-aabo","12":"tag-lars-eller","13":"tag-nick-olesen","14":"tag-ottawa-senators","15":"tag-team-spirit","16":"tag-winter-olympics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}