If you are looking for Team USA hockey jerseys to buy after the men’s team won its first gold since the Miracle on Ice in 1980, you are out of luck. There aren’t any to find.
Nike, which handles the manufacturing of hockey merchandise for Team USA, did not produce enough stock because Canada, not the United States, was expected to win Olympic gold.
The Olympics are what’s called a “hot market,” said Darren Rovell, the founder of collectibles media site CLLC Media. That means Nike intends to sell all of the gear manufactured and doesn’t want to keep unsold merchandise. There is a brief period — two weeks — in which Olympic merchandise is trending before the Games end.
Where can you get an official Jack Hughes Team USA jersey made by Nike?
NOWHERE!
Here’s how you explain it to your kid who wants one today. pic.twitter.com/vjd0hL6NvL
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) February 23, 2026
This causes brands such as Nike to try to forecast the exact number of jerseys that will sell and only make that amount. Therefore, when Team USA does the unexpected and wins the gold medal in men’s hockey for the first time in 46 years, there is an unexpected spike in interest that hadn’t been accounted for during manufacturing. Nike did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Athletic about how many jerseys it manufactured or how quickly they sold.
Retailers such as Fanatics and Dick’s Sporting Goods get all of their licensed Team USA hockey jerseys directly from Nike, which controls the supply chain. If Nike doesn’t make enough, the retailers don’t have the supply to sell and can’t make their own because they aren’t licensed to create the jerseys.
It’s a great example of Nike’s process being reasonable, if frustrating to fans. But the outcome is like giving up an overtime goal that costs your team gold. By the time a jersey could now be manufactured and distributed, the moment of intent-to-purchase is long gone. (Even anecdotally: Sunday at noon, one of the writers of this piece was absolutely ready to plunk down $40 for a Jack Hughes USA t-shirt jersey. By noon Monday, he was already like: “Ehh, I don’t need it.”)
Potential winners here? Rapid-response merchandisers such as BreakingT that have deals with pro players associations, like the NHLPA, which gives them access to the name, image and likeness of U.S. Olympic hockey players and a chance to capture a slice of a massive market of fans hoping to memorialize the medal moment with a T-shirt featuring a player’s name, a winning catchphrase or, perhaps, an iconic broken-tooth smile.
Fanatics, which had the licenses to produce jerseys for the Super Bowl earlier this month, ran out of stock for Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots jerseys. Neither team was projected to make the big game and, in turn, see a huge surge in interest.
“NFL fans, we’ve seen your jersey feedback, and we take it very seriously,” Fanatics wrote in a statement during Super Bowl week. “We’ve let Patriots and Seahawks fans down with product availability, we own that and we are sorry.
“This Super Bowl matchup created unprecedented challenges for us because of the massive surge in demand we saw from Patriots and Seahawks fans. Both teams went from missing the playoffs last season to being in the Super Bowl, an incredibly rare occurrence that led to these two fan bases buying nearly 400 percent more jerseys since Thanksgiving vs. last year. Even though we ordered substantially more jerseys for these teams than ever before, we’ve struggled to meet the overwhelming demand to keep team color jerseys in stock, which we know is your expectation. As sports fans, we understand your frustration, and we will work tirelessly to be better.”
This time, though, Fanatics is the outlet for Nike, which was tasked with projecting the exact amount of merchandise needed and producing it. The excitement of Team USA unexpectedly winning gold became the reason jerseys sold out everywhere.