Canada’s inferiority complex regarding the United States, already an open sore due to President Donald Trump trolling about it becoming our 51st state, or Trump’s tariff talk, now must cope with the effects of a defeat in the 4 Nations Face-Off hockey event Saturday.
On a night in Montreal that began with Canadian fans roundly booing the U.S. National Anthem, and saw the game start with not one, not two, but three fights in the first nine seconds, the U.S. team overcame a 1-0 deficit to win 3-1 and quiet those formerly loud and obnoxious home fans.
By game’s end, the American fans among the now diminished crowd could be heard chanting U-S-A, sounding a lot like a Trump political rally. Probably the Big Guy was doing a little cheering himself somewhere, maybe even having a Y-M-C-A celebratory dance.
It’s not bad enough that Canadian culture is dominated by our music and movies, that its economy is heavily depending on the U.S., now the U.S. has struck a blow in hockey, something smug Canadians love to call “our game.”
The funny thing is, even though hockey is easily the number one sport in Canada, it probably is No. 4 in the U.S. But that has not prevented our hockey players from winning two straight World Junior titles and three of the past five.
Those smug Canadians answer that with a yea, but. Yes, the younger U.S. players are dominating, but the so-called best-on-best international competition with NHL players involved, which we haven’t had for about a decade, should go to Canada.
It still could. It didn’t Saturday.
The U.S. won, and dominated during long stretches. Excuse makers among the Canada crowd will note defenseman Cal Makar didn’t play due to illness. OK, but American defenseman Quinn Hughes, generally considered in the argument with Makar as the best defenseman in the NHL, has not played the entire tournament due to injury.
Also, Canada was playing at home so to speak, before a raucous crowd, and got the game’s first goal, usually significant in games of this magnitude and talent level.
The win had its roots in a Trump-like mentality — fight, fight, fight.
One perhaps biased announcer noted that the Brothers Tkachuk (Matthew and Brady) were bigger than their fight opponents in the opening seconds of play. Matt (6-2, 202) is the same height as his opponent Brandon Hagel (6-2, 180) but does outweigh him. Brady (6-4, 225) has the size edge on his fight mate Sam Bennett (6-1, 193).
The announcer said nothing about the third fight pairing, pitting American J.T. Miller (6-1, 218) against Canadian Colton Parayko (6-6, 230).
I would hasten to add that the Tkachuk brothers had scored two goals apiece in the United States’ opening win vs. Finland, so the fights cost the U.S. the services of two key players for five minutes each, while the Canadians had two lesser lights forced to sit in the penalty box.
The third fight was more of an even loss in terms of talent.
Apparently the decision was made among U.S. players during a group chat that it was important to fight and send a message early, then deal with being temporarily short-handed.
Bottom line: The U.S. team has one remaining round-robin game, Monday with Sweden, but advances to the Thursday championship game regardless of that outcome.
Canada must beat Finland Monday to set up a rematch with the U.S. in the title game.
Those Monday and Thursday games move to Boston, where presumably the crowd won’t be booing our national anthem, but might return the favor regarding O Canada.
If you missed this game, be sure to catch a potential rematch. The Saturday game reinforced my preference for hockey over other sports. The players still put the team concept first, the games are a mix of speed and grace with physical violence, and seldom do you see players merely going through the motions. When they are wearing their nation’s colors, it adds another level to all the above aspects.
Fights don’t hurt the appeal. The talking heads were giddy over the three fights so quickly and were searching their memory banks for reference points.
Social media was buzzing over it all, too.
For those of us who grew up here in Johnstown, and witnessed the Jets teams upon which the movie Slap Shot was based, it was nothing special.
Hell, I can recall entire teams from Johnstown and Syracuse brawling in pregame warmups, before any officials were present to break up fights, One Jets tough guy beat a Syracuse player’s head on the ice repeatedly, leaving a pool of blood on the ice that spread to resemble yet another faceoff dot.
Three fights in the first nine seconds was entertaining, but I’ve seen much worse.
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