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Fans joke that Team USA's partying caught up with Auston Matthews, Jake Guentzel on this play
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- Fans joke that Team USA's partying caught up with Auston Matthews, Jake Guentzel on this play
Fans joke that Team USA's partying caught up with Auston Matthews, Jake Guentzel on this play originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here .
Auston Matthews and Jake Guentzel both hustled to get back on the ice for the Toronto Maple Leafs and Tampa Bay Lightning on Wednesday night as those teams clashed in Florida.
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The duo had been part of Team USA's gold medal men's hockey team, which won that game in Milan, Italy, on Sunday.
Matthews had gone to the White House on Tuesday with most of his teammates, while Guentzel had already returned to Tampa Bay.
Either way, they were out there on the ice Wednesday night, a game the Lightning controlled from start to finish.
There was always going to be a question of how the Team USA guys were doing, particularly after their big celebration in Miami on Monday night that stretched into the wee hours of Tuesday morning.
And in the third period on Wednesday, Guentzel and Matthews had successive moments that had fans cracking some jokes.
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First, Guentzel was in on a wide-open net after the goalie had been pulled. He hit his shot off the post, then flailed while trying to get the rebound.
The Leafs immediately went the other way and scored a goal, but during that transition rush, Matthews (34 in the video below) found himself nearly in a collision and then nearly falling over backward.
Clearly, playing a sport on ice can exacerbate any little slips that have nothing to do with recent partying.
That didn't stop fans from being amused by it.
In the end, Matthews and Guentzel are both gold medalists. That can't be taken from them.
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