Not just hockey. Not just politics. That game was everything right now

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Maybe Donald Trump wants to take over Canada just so his country can finally win a hockey tournament again. And, of course, it was Connor McDavid who said: not yet.

In the end, the final of the 4 Nations Face-Off was exactly what was expected: tense, taut, more than a little terrifying, a battle of two teams that have little between them. Canada, the hockey nation that has been reluctant to give up its crown. And America, the country that has been trying, for a couple of decades now, to wrest it away.

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For everyone on the ice, as McDavid found space in the slot and then buried a Mitch Marner pass from the corner to win the final in overtime, a play with freaky echoes of Vancouver 2010, that mattered a lot. Canada retains the championship belt, to be put on the line again a year from now at the Olympics in northern Italy.

For everyone at home, hockey supremacy was just part of the story. This was a chance to stick it in the ear of Donald J. Trump, Canada’s mocker-in-chief. And damn if it wasn’t a little satisfying that McDavid and friends did exactly that.

The crowd at TD Garden in Boston booed the Canadian national anthem, obvious payback for the Montreal fans who did the same thing to The Star Spangled Banner last week. No one in Boston likely considered the context: they were just booing our anthem; we were responding to Trump’s annexation talk and his law-breaking tariff plans. This wasn’t just about rooting for the home team.

From the moment the tournament began, there was a distinct sense that the players did not quite grasp the environment in which they were playing.

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When the American national anthem was first booed enthusiastically in Montreal on Saturday night, members of Team USA like Matthew Tkachuk sniffed that they didn’t appreciate it. “That’s all I got,” he said, evidently not wanting to get drawn into a larger discussion of the meaning of booing an anthem.

In the days since, members of both teams talked about being apolitical about — waves hands dramatically in the air — all of this.

“We’re here to play hockey. This is not a political forum,” said Team USA general manager Bill Guerin on Thursday morning, after he received a good-luck call from Trump. “This is a hockey tournament. And he’s just trying to be supportive in the best way that he could, and we appreciate it.”

Mmmm, OK.

Here was American coach Mike Sullivan on the same Trump call: “It was a distinct honour,” he said. “Politics aside, when the president of the United States takes the time to speak to our players, it’s an incredible honour.”

Ah. Right, then.

Player after player was similarly enthusiastic.

Forward J.T. Miller, recently traded from the Vancouver Canucks because he couldn’t get along with the Swedish captain: ““It was pretty cool. It was so awesome to get his support. It’s a pretty big deal for him to take time out of his schedule to talk to us for five minutes.”

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Defenceman Zach Werenski: “We’re proud Americans, and we want to make the country proud. And just to hear from him was awesome.”

Even on the Canadian side of the aisle, there was a fun-and-games whiff to the endeavour.

Coach Jon Cooper said politics were not a motivating factor for his team.

“Other than the fact of the talk of the 51st state, and then somebody saying, ‘Wow, we’d have one hell of a hockey team.’”
Little joke there. Good one, coach. Cooper went on to say that all the Canadians could do was try to represent their country well. Fair enough.

But glaringly absent from all of the pre-game talk, especially from the Americans, was even the slightest acknowledgement that the Canadians had every right to be aggrieved at their opponents, and more to the point at the president over whom Team USA was collectively swooning.

This isn’t “politics,” in the normal sense when otherwise reasonable people might disagree over the best way to fund government services or tackle overspending.

This is something else entirely: The president of the United States spending literal weeks now openly musing about wiping Canada, as a country, off the map, simply because he thinks it would be a good business deal for his country.

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Guerin, Miller, Sullivan, Tkachuk and whoever else can wave it away as merely this thorny politics business in which they choose not to get involved but, respectfully, they can cram it. Donald Trump is an absolute menace to his allies, and Americans who choose to pretend like this is all part of the normal cut and thrust of politics are very much responsible for why we are where we are.

So, for a night, on a sheet of ice in a city that knows a thing about revolutions, some Canadians had a chance to bloody the nose of their would-be oppressor.

Was Jordan Binnington thinking about annexation threats when he was making six saves in overtime to keep Canada alive? No, he was just stopping pucks. And Marner was just digging out the puck and looking for a pass, and McDavid was finishing his chance.

Marner to McDavid will now fit in there nicely with Gretzky to Lemieux and Iginla to Crosby in Canada’s moments of hockey glory.

But this one comes as Canada has felt under siege, from bizarre and unexpected forces. We’ve been celebrating our identity in response, waving our flags and puffing out our chests a little.

Those big wins of the past are properly seen as this country’s great hockey moments. This one felt more like a celebration of Canada.

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