When is a hockey game more than a hockey game? When a president places a pregame call to pump up the players, a prime minister offers postgame commentary, and monuments such as the Empire State Building and Toronto’s CN Tower are lit up in national colors for the contest.
The NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off final in Boston on Thursday night, between Team Canada and Team USA, was a brilliant hockey game that the Canadians won 3-2 in sudden-death overtime. But beyond the great hockey, the game served as an alarming testament to the state of Canadian-American relations.
We’ve hit an icy low. Canada’s hurt, and make no mistake, Canada’s hurt will eventually be America’s and California’s.
No on-ice moment exemplified off-ice sentiment more than the preliminary-round game between the same two teams in Montreal the week before. The angry Canadian crowd jeered the American Olympic figure skating medalist Michelle Kwan and booed “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Then three American players gooned it up by picking three fights in the game’s first nine seconds because they “had to send a message.”
The bad blood is over a looming trade war between the two countries and Canadians’ broader fears of the new American administration.
Goons fight with words as well as fists. On the day of the final, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said she looked forward to Team USA “beating our soon-to-be 51st state, Canada.” Canadian columnists, meanwhile, are “frightened” of the United States; one, Pete McMartin of the Vancouver Sun, recently wrote, “Goodbye America. … I’ve reached that point in our relationship where any admiration I have had for you has been replaced by a new, angry resolve, which is: I won’t consort with the enemy.”
Not since Wayne Gretzky’s hat trick put the Kings in the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals has a hockey game had such implications for California. Canada and California, which have roughly equal populations, exchanged nearly $30 billion in two-way trade in 2020, when the Canadian Consulate in L.A. reported that 774 Canadian-owned businesses employed more than 76,000 Californians. Millions of Canadian travelers spend billions of dollars in California every year.
But Canada and California don’t just share commerce; Hollywood has a great creative partner in our northern neighbor. Hits such as “Titanic,” “The Revenant,” “Deadpool” and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” were filmed in Canada. And television’s Golden Age wouldn’t be so golden without Canada: Shows including “The Handmaid’s Tale” (based on the book by Canadian author Margaret Atwood), “Schitt’s Creek” (starring Canadians Eugene and Daniel Levy) and even the “Property Brothers” are Canadian.
It’s fitting that a sport that once echoed America’s Cold War with the Soviet Union now reflects a nascent trade war with Canada. Granted, we’re talking about economic rather than nuclear devastation. And yet the phrase “mutually assured destruction” still applies. A trade war — this one with a longtime ally rather than an adversary — is like a hockey fight in that everyone loses. The only question is how badly.
Take the goons who fought in Montreal. Instead of playing their hearts out for their country, they deliberately put themselves in the penalty box. All pain, no gain. But that’s what goons do. They choose the performative over performance, spectacle over contribution, me over we — the exact opposite of what the legendary gold-medal-winning 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team was all about.
Goons never really win because they’re all about pulling others down. Of the six who fought in Montreal, not one scored.
This is what happens when we give our games and governments over to the goons. Canada and California have far too much to lose to let this stand, not least at the intersection of the economy and sports. The 2026 World Cup — a joint venture of the United States, Canada and Mexico — features seven games at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. We can’t allow the world’s longest friendly boundary to turn hostile — to militarize a border longer than 34 Korean DMZs.
So how can we get the puck from where it is to where we want it to be?
We need the good guys and gals to drown out the goons and refuse the ridiculous in favor of the rational. Canada will never become the 51st state because Canadians don’t want it, and it would give the Democratic Party a Cali-sized electoral haul. And remember the 2018 steel tariffs the first Trump administration levied against Canada (among others)? You might not, because they were gone in under a year. Rationality won out.
The good guys and gals in the National Hockey League and other cross-border sports events can help out here too. If they can’t guarantee mutual respect for our national anthems, let’s find other areas of common ground.
Try a moment of silence for our emergency personnel. Both nations have sent firefighters to respond to each other’s devastating fires over the past couple of years. “Good neighbors are always there for each other,” Alberta’s forestry minister said as he sent firefighters to Los Angeles last month, returning the favor for 2023, when “California firefighters bravely supported Alberta in a time of great need.”
No matter how bad things look, no matter what angry words are spoken, no matter how many fists are thrown, we are neighbors and friends, and the good guys and gals of Canada and California will win. We just need them to speak up.
Now would be a good time.
ML Cavanaugh is a co-founder of the Modern War Institute at West Point and author of the forthcoming book “Best Scar Wins: How You Can Be More Than You Were Before.” @MLCavanaugh
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