Triple Gold Club

The Triple Gold Club is the group of ice hockey players and coaches who have won an Olympic Games gold medal, a World Championship gold medal, and the Stanley Cup, the championship trophy of the National Hockey League (NHL). The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) considers them to be "the three most important championships available to the sport".^[1]

Tomas Jonsson, Mats Näslund, and Håkan Loob became the first members on 27 February 1994 when Sweden won the gold medal at the 1994 Winter Olympics. The term first entered popular use following the 2002 Winter Olympics, which saw the addition of the first Canadian members.^[2][3][4] On 8 May 2007, the IIHF announced it would formalize the club and recognize the players who had won the three championships.^[5][6][7][8] The induction ceremony was held, with all 22 members at the time present, at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, on 22 February 2010.^[9]

There are 30 player members of the Triple Gold Club—eleven Canadians, nine Swedes, seven Russians, two Czechs, and one Finn. Eleven of the players are defencemen and the remaining players are forwards; to date, no goaltender has achieved the honor.^[1] From the time of their first victory, Niklas Kronwall, Mikael Samuelsson and Henrik Zetterberg took the least time to join the club, winning the Olympics and World Championships in 2006 (as members of the Swedish national team) and the Stanley Cup in 2008 (as members of the Detroit Red Wings).^[10] In contrast, it took Russian Viacheslav Fetisov 19 years from his first victory to become a member. Jonathan Toews is the youngest player to accomplish the feat, winning the third championship (the Stanley Cup) at the age of 22 years, 42 days; Pavel Datsyuk is the oldest, winning Olympic gold at 39 years, 220 days. Russians Fetisov and Igor Larionov, and Swede Peter Forsberg are the only players to have won each of the three championships more than once. Ten members of the Triple Gold Club have won the Stanley Cup as part of the Detroit Red Wings, more than any other NHL team.

Mike Babcock became the first, and so far only, coach to win all three components of the Triple Gold Club on 28 February 2010 when he led Canada to a gold medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics. He won the World Championship in 2004 and coached the Red Wings to a Stanley Cup win in 2008.^[11] In 2015, Sidney Crosby became the first Triple Gold Club member to captain all three of his winning teams.^[12] On 29 May 2022, Valtteri Filppula became the latest member of the club, playing for Finland in the 2022 IIHF World Championship.