Two Nations: What the Canada-USA “Face-Off” actually meant
Canada wins the first of what should be many to come
It’s been a sneaky-rough year in Canada so far.
A never-perfect-but-a lot-better-than-the-alternative country has seen political strife at the federal level, but this is not a place that needs to be made great again. It already is.
The polls will tell you that - for whatever reason - the masses are drifting towards a cultural attitude that recently prevailed south of the border. Anyone with a decent B-S detector can tell that campaign slogans don’t translate to action, but we’ve devolved to a point where a headline is worth more than the details, and too few seem to have time to actually do their own research.
On a provincial level, we’re being told that it’s a good idea to build a tunnel for $60 billion is a good idea. I mean, what??
So, even if we didn’t approve the architecture, if you live in a glass house, you should keep the stone-throwing to a minimum.
While parsing through our own issues, we’ve done our usual thing north of the border. We’ve been minding our own business, as the neighbor who shovels their driveway AND a little more of the sidewalk than they’re required to. But, to continue the metaphor, all of a sudden, a newly freed ex-con has moved back into the house he inherited - the one with the broken down truck on cinderblocks in the driveway. He has started allowing his dog piss on our lawn. Sure, it’s a passive-aggressive threat that no one with a brain takes seriously, but it’s still an insult. How do you resolve conflict with someone who doesn’t believe he has anything to lose? Who doesn’t have to fight the wars he starts?
Meanwhile, 2025’s weather has been brutal. Sure, it’s been weird for everyone north and south of the border, but while the odd snowstorm is cute for the ‘gram in Florida or Louisiana, the seemingly relentless cold - contrary to its reputation - is not usual to ALL of Canada.
So we’ll stay inside a little more. Perhaps skipping a trip to the warmer climate of the southern U.S. states this year. Canadians go to the U.S. all the time, we enjoy it, we consume your popular culture, and having just watched all the excellent recent content surrounding Saturday Night Live’s 50th anniversary, it’s clear we’ve supplied it as well.
In reality, we know your country better than you know ours, and we’ve never had a problem with that. As the American icons from The Jersey Shore once said, “You do you.”
Booing the U.S. anthem wasn’t about hockey. It wasn’t about tariffs. It was about being personally insulted by the absurd concept that Canada would ever demean itself by becoming the 51st of anything.
So with the first six weeks of 2025 handing us these unexpected challenges and no where to flush them out, Canada could use a win. Especially since, if we’re being honest, it doesn’t REALLY matter to those chanting “U-S-A!”.
Just take a swing by the headlines on ESPN the next morning:
If you remove yourself from social media for any length of time, you might allow yourself to remember that you don’t need EVERYthing. It’s possible to be content with what you have. Maybe that’s safety and security for your family or your community. Maybe that’s being the best at hockey. Here? It’s both.
Anything worth winning is only so if it’s hard.
Canadians have been synonymous with hockey, but the 300 million or so Americans get to pick and choose what matters to them in sports. The basketball people love the idea of America being the dominant force in that sport, which is why the NBA will never have a midseason tournament like the one the NHL rubber-stamped. The money won’t allow for it and the “LeBron Generation” only wants to participate when the deck is stacked in their favor.
On Monday’s THE WINDOW podcast, we talked about the concept of this being merely the start of the third generation of International Hockey - a “Game 1” of maybe seven. It’s been 34 years since the Americans submitted their application for hockey supremacy at the 1991 Canada Cup, replacing the politically-torn Soviet Union as Canada’s challenger. Later, winning the summer World Cup of hockey in 1996 was a step in the right direction, but Canada won “generation two” decisively.
On the podcast, we half-kidded about if having HD cameras at that time might have changed the result in a championship game decided by two thoroughly sketchy goals.
This week’s event wasn’t about winning the championship of the “4 Nations,” this was the Canada-USA Invitational, the first matchup of what should be many more with events schedule in 2026, 2028, 2030, and 2032 - five events in fewer years than the span of time we had to wait for this event.
Connor McDavid was one of the biggest voices in getting back into a “best-on-best” competition, and it wasn’t so that Canada could match-up against Finland.
Of course, the span of this tournament was hijacked by a bored, post-Super Bowl, sports media that focused on the Tkachuk brothers, appealing to the lowest common denominator of viewer/listener/reader-ship (sound familiar?). It was portrayed as if their pre-meditated challenge was more impressive than two undersized athletes answering the bell. Imagine being in a society that glorifies the guys who plan the conflict versus those who stick up for their side when called out in a surprise attack. Well, here we are.
Matthew Tkachuk pre-selected Brandon Hagel (20 lbs lighter), didn’t particularly win that fight and he couldn’t finish THIS fight. Then, his brother selects Sam Bennett (30 lbs lighter) and barely gets the edge. To his credit, reported semi-lunatic JT Miller at least fought someone bigger than him (though that went poorly and it was the last we noticed Miller for the tournament).
No tournament has ever been won in the second game. Ideally, the cream eventually rises to the top, regardless of an event’s length. One of the best players on the planet, Nathan MacKinnon, wins tournament MVP, but, like Sydney Crosby in 2010, OF COURSE it was McDavid to score the game-winner. This was not a game where Colton Parayko or Noah Hanifan would score the clincher. It wasn’t even going to be Auston Matthews.
It was always McDavid.
Perhaps ironically, the best hockey player I’ve ever seen channeled the Accuracy Shooting Contest that we see semi-annually at this time of year during the NHL’s All-Star Weekend - the event this one replaced.
Imagine an All-Star skills event that actually applies to the sport itself. Five days after a G-Leaguer is jumping over a car (rare seen on court during NBA games), McDavid, the 2024 winner of the target-shooting contest, found the invisible pie plate in the top-right corner of the net.
That game-winner came after Sam Bennett used his hands again, this time to shelve one of the prettiest goals of the tournament to tie the game, after MacKinnon found the top-corner to open the scoring early. No high-sticks, no weird kicking motions, just corners.
Number of players who have won the Stanley Cup on the 4 Nations roster:
Canada - 16
USA - 3Rightly or wrongly (probably the latter, to be honest), this country cares about one thing above all else - hockey. It can be frustrating for someone who loves U.S. college sports, and it’s not something Americans at-large will ever understand. Their sporting attention is divided by the ones they made up - baseball, football and basketball (invented by a Canadian who like many of us are happy to ply trade in the USA). Anyone who’s been around THE WINDOW knows we’re happy to have those sports, but excellence in those sports only vexes Americans when they’re not any good at soccer, tennis, or fail to win away from home in golf’s Ryder Cup. The deck isn’t stacked for those sports in the same way.
If you took a vote worldwide, Canadians, Fins, Swedes, and all others uninvited to this week’s tournament would likely be content with America as the global political power they desire to be, IF they play that game the right way.
It’s the difference between what happens off the ice compared to on it. You get what you earn. The best hockey player - the one who had been calling for this, asking for this smoke - earned the win for a country he was already proud of. It wasn’t done for a medal, or a trophy no one will recognize when it’s sitting on a table at Customs on the way back to Canada. What was won was the right to exhale, to not have to see a series of white-trash posts from “Truth” social, or from other wanna-be, thirsty trolls. After the game, there were no verbal thumbs-down pointed to the other side, only the hope that Canada was made proud.
A year from now, we’ll get to do it all over again, amidst the backdrop of the Olympic ethos, the village, and the other pride-inspiring athletes getting the attention they warrant. We can only hope hockey’s gold medal will be competed for between these two teams, but whoever is in the final will have earned it.
For now, McDavid’s goal merely means Canada gets to go back to minding our own business, playing our game on and off the ice, trying to be good people, doing our part so that everyone is safe and secure, hoping that maybe one day soon we can play a big game without excess garbage.
We’ll continue to not need to win everything, instead continuing to help American hockey fans feel better about themselves by winning the Stanley Cup for their local teams (maybe?), only for the players to bring it back, showing it off to a dozen small towns each summer in Canada - a country that doesn’t need fixing.
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