Bad Blood on the Ice as America and Canada Set To Face Off for Hockey Championship

Thursday night’s hockey game between Team USA and Team Canada at Boston is the biggest international matchup on ice since the Soviet Red Army team’s glory days. No longer a goodwill exhibition, the championship of 2025’s “4 Nations Faceoff” will reverberate across the continent.“We would love it if President Trump was in attendance,” Team USA’s general manager, Bill Guerin, told Fox News on Sunday. “We have a room full of proud American players and coaches and staff … just trying to represent our country the best way we can.”Ever since Mr. Trump proposed tariffs on Canadian goods, the Great White North has been smarting. This resentment carried over into the first 4 Nations game between America and Canada at Montreal on Saturday, when locals booed “The Star-Spangled Banner.”The American National Anthem is a song of pride, written by a prisoner of war, Francis Scott Key. He scribbled the lyrics as he watched his British captors bombard Fort McHenry at Baltimore “through the night” of September 18, 1814.In “the dawn’s early light,” Key saw the flag over Fort McHenry “was still there,” proclaiming that the underdog Americans had refused to surrender. Today, Canadians, who take pride in repelling American invasions during the war, are the ones who feel under siege by a superpower they see as bent on conquest.Canada’s Spirit of 1812 returned as those boos rained down, and the boys in red, white, and blue answered the bell with three fights in the game’s first nine seconds. Fisticuffs are a rarity in international competition these days, but this was a Cold War-era throwback.Prime Minister Trudeau, unpopular and on his way out, was in attendance. Teased by Mr. Trump as “governor of the 51st state,” he saw his team score the first goal and he looked ready to enjoy a rare victory against his nemesis, a fellow hockey fan.Instead, Team USA scored three unanswered goals to reach the championship, silencing the crowd. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s iconic “Free Bird” and “U! S! A!” chants rocked the Bell Center in celebration of the 3-1 triumph.Several Team USA players said they’d used the boos as motivation for beating Canada in its most storied hockey town at a game they consider their own. “These guys are hockey players,” the visiting coach, Mike Sullivan, told the press. “They’re also proud Americans.”With a victory over Finland on Monday — Sweden rounded out the quartet — Canada manifested its destiny for Thursday’s rematch. This time, Team USA will have home ice advantage, and its fans will decide if they duplicate Montreal’s chilly reception.Boston teams and their fans have grit, too. In 1979, at New York’s Madison Square Garden, a Bruins-Rangers game erupted into a donnybrook. Those spectators, like Montreal’s, tried to get in on the act.One Rangers fan reached over the glass, grabbed a stick, and hit a Bruin, prompting teammates to lunge into the stands. A Bruins defenseman, Mike Milbury — a Massachusetts native who played on America’s national team — pulled a shoe off one attacker and used it to spank him.Brawls and boos make news, but the NHL hopes to highlight skill on Thursday. Hockey is the “hardest sport,” a former NHL executive, Brian Burke, said on Canada’s “Dave Kelly Live.” He noted that unlike other sports, hockey players don’t “hold the object in their hand” or wear sneakers.Olympians medal in “two disciplines for skating alone,” Mr. Burke said. He added that hockey players have “got to be fearless,” a decisive quality for Thursday’s showdown. It will be the biggest international game at Boston since 1976, when the feared Soviet Six prevailed over the Bruins, 5-2.“Let’s just say,” a legendary Bruins coach, Don Cherry, said after the game, “the people saw a good show.” Another good show is on tap Thursday. Team USA likes its chances, the sport having the spotlight to itself with baseball and football dormant.The 49th Parallel, the world’s largest undefended border, is now the front line of a trade war. Regardless of whether Mr. Trump is in attendance, look for both teams to leave everything on the ice. Sticks, skates, and fists will decide if, when the 4 Nations trophy is awarded, “The Star-Spangled Banner” rings out triumphant.

Bad Blood on the Ice as America and Canada Set To Face Off for Hockey Championship

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