IT WILL BE A CLOSE GAME IF CANADA HAS ENOUGH FIREPOWER
It’s unlikely there is a hockey fan in North America who doesn’t understand what’s happening on Thursday night. It’s also unlikely that there is a fan who isn’t aware of the impact and importance of an exhibition hockey game that, back in October, was promising to be little more than a February diversion.
Thursday night, it’s the one-game final of the inaugural Four Nations Face-Off between Canada and the United States -- a tournament that has been a wonderful surprise at every level. However, it is not just a hockey game. For Canada, it's an international and cultural fight that hasn’t been seen since the 1972 Canada-Soviet Union Summit Series.
Oh, sure we’ve had plenty of big games with both the USA and Russia since then. The Olympic gold medal games against the USA in 2002 and 2010 immediately come to mind.
However, while the two countries battled hard on the ice in those Olympic Games, one country didn’t despise the other enough to boo its national anthem, That’s an opinion that has obviously changed. Politics is a nasty thing when one country becomes a rogue, authoritarian police state almost overnight. That, I'm afraid, is even more distasteful.
It’s almost fitting, then, that this game on Thursday night has a real 1972 Canada-Soviet atmosphere engulfing it.
The way the United States President has talked in the past two days about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the administration of the United States is now, for lack of a better term, a propaganda arm of Vladimir Putin’s Russian government. As Donald Trump spews Russian talking points about one of Canada’s allies (and until Jan. 20, 2025, an ally of the USA), and threatens to invade Canada, our relationship with the USA has changed instantly and dramatically.
And Canadians have noticed. They have been booing the Star-Spangled Banner since the current United States president reneged on the Canada-Mexico-United States Trade Agreement, an agreement that he not only touted and but also bragged about. and instead announced that he will put 25 per cent trade tariffs on many important Canadian goods exported to the USA. It was not only a violation of the agreement, but it was also a targeted attack on Canada, with Trump making clear that he hoped to destroy his neighbours’ economy to force Canada to join the US as, “the 51st State.”
Since then, every time Trump addresses the issue, he almost repeats, word-for-word, what Putin said shortly before he invaded Ukraine.
Now, frankly, I would have preferred a loud chant of Trump Sucks! during the anthem as opposed to booing. After all, 48.3 percent of US voters did cast their ballots for Kamala Harris while 49.1 percent voted for Trump. It was a close election, and 75 million American voters knew what Trump was going to do to them – and us -- if he won the election. After all, when it comes to the MAGA movement, inflicting pain on people is a feature, not a bug.
However, Trump did win and when he threatens, on an almost weekly basis, to “annex” Canada, it’s quite easy to understand why Canadians are pissed.
For all intents and purposes, we are in an undeclared war with the United States, a country that is now an ally of the Russian government and if that doesn’t make Thursday’s hockey game a mirror of the final games of the ’72 Summit Series, I’d be hard-pressed to find another one that does. OK, sure, maybe the final of the 1987 Canada Cup between Canada and the Soviet Union (Canada won 6-5 on what was maybe the International Goal of the Century), but that’s the closest any other tournament has come. And when I covered that game at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, I didn’t sense an outright hatred for the opponent.
Thursday night’s game will be different. It’s in Boston, a Blue State that voted for Harris last November and probably hates Trump as much as most Canadians, but still Canadians are righteously upset at the Donald and his threats, so for most Canadian hockey fans, while the venue will be more friendly than, say Tampa or Raleigh, it’s still being played on enemy ground. This is hockey war and Canadians – fans and players alike – want nothing less than a symbolic victory.
“We’re out there playing for the flag, not the cameras,” said Team Canada’s Brandon Hagel during an off-day news conference earlier this week. “That’s a part of Canada that we have in there. We don’t need to initiate anything, we don’t have any group chats going on, we’re going out there playing our game and giving it everything and doing it for our country.”
Hagel was referring to two the three US MAGAts, Brady and Matthew Tkachuk and JT Miller who picked three fights just nine seconds into last Saturday night’s Canada-USA preliminary-round game in Montreal.
Dirty, goon hockey is a trademark of the Tkachuk boys and they don’t need much of an excuse to make a cheap-ass spectacle of themselves. In fact, the Tkachuks’ dancing around like idiots against Canada last Saturday brought back memories of Matthew Tkachuk’s successful attempt to injure the Jets’ Mark Scheifele during the COVID season of 2020. The hit on Scheifele in which Tkachuk attempted to slice the Jets’ forward’s Achilles with his skate, was called “disgusting,” by then-Jets head coach Paul Maurice, but it was all in a day’s work for a Tkachuk brother (and why I’m glad Scheifele wasn’t asked to play for Team Canada this year).
So, all that (and likely a little more), will be the backdrop for Thursday’s game in Boston. Canada, almost as a nation, is hoping the Canadians can avenge last Saturday’s 3-1 loss to the Yanks, a close 2-1-with-an-empty- netter outcome that makes Thursday night’s game even more dramatic. Last Saturday’s game was close, this one could very well be close again. The Vegas oddsmakers on Wednesday had it at even-money.
However, I do have to add a word of caution. The United States has a better team. The Americans have the best goaltender in the world in Connor Hellebuyck and they have more elite goal scorers. Canada’s goaltending is clearly second-best in this matchup and, after Connor McDavid, Nathan McKinnon and maybe Mitch Marner, the Canadians don’t have many (or any) pure goal scorers. As well, it’s been a really tough tournament for Sam Bennett, Travis Konecny, Brad Marchand and Anthony Cirelli, who are obviously having trouble with the elite level of speed this tournament has delivered.
However, to be fair, McDavid, McKinnon, Crosby and the Canadian defensive corps have all been superb throughout the event, an event that was not supposed to be as good or as exciting as it has been. Oh, and Winnipeg Jets' D-man Josh Morrissey deserves a special shout out. He has been outstanding in every game.
And we could not assess an international hockey tournament without mentioning one important intangible: There is no measuring stick for the size of the heart of a Canadian hockey player. Never has been. And that’s why you just can’t look at stats or even a player’s history and then suggest, “Well, the Canadians aren’t good enough.”
The heart and soul of the Canadian hockey player has long driven Canada’s international success and that’s what Canadian hockey fans want to see on Thursday night.
Give ‘em hell Team Canada. Give ‘em hell.
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