When is a hockey match more than a hockey match? When a president places an avant game call To inflate the players, a Prime Minister Comments offer after the matchand monuments such as the Empire State Building and the Toronto CN tower are on the national colors For the competition.
On Thursday evening, the NNH Nations final in Boston, between Team Canada and Team USA, was a brilliant hockey match that Canadians won 3-2 in sudden death. But beyond the big hockey, the game was an alarming testimony to the state of Canadian-American relations.
We have reached an icy hollow. Canada's injury and are not mistaken, Canada's injury will finally be American and California.
No moment on ice illustrated the feeling out of ice more than the preliminary match between the same two teams from Montreal the previous week. The angry Canadian crowd stuck The American MICHELLE KWAN and hooky “The star banner.” Then three American players accelerated it by choosing three fights in the first nine seconds of the game because they “had to send a message. “”
Bad blood is on an imminent trade war between the two countries and the wider fears of the Canadians of the new American administration.
Men of hench are fighting with words as well as fists. The final day, the press secretary of the White House Karoline Leavitt said She was looking forward to the American team “beating our next 51st state, Canada”. Canadian chroniclers, on the other hand, are “afraid“From the United States; one, Pete McMartin of Vancouver Sun, recently wrote“Goodbye America. … I have reached this point of our relationship where all admiration that I had for you was replaced by a new angry determination, which is: I do not consort with the enemy.”
Not from Wayne Gretzky hat trick Putting the Kings in the 1993 Stanley Cup final has a hockey match had such implications for California. Canada and California, which have roughly equal populations, have exchanged nearly $ 30 billion bidirectional trade In 2020, when the Canadian consulate of the reported that 774 companies belonging to Canadians employed more than 76,000 Californians. Millions of Canadian travelers spend billions of dollars in California each year.
But Canada and California not only share trade; Hollywood has an excellent creative partner in our north neighbor. Tubes such as “Titanic”, “The Revenant”, “Deadpool” and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” were deposit in Canada. And the golden age of television would not be as golden without Canada: programs including “The Handmaid's Tale” (based on the book by Canadian author Margaret Atwood), “Schitt's Creek” (with Canadians Eugene and Daniel Levy) and even the “property brothers” are Canadian.
It is normal for a sport that echoed the American Cold War with the Soviet Union now reflects an emerging trade war with Canada. Certainly, we are talking about economic devastation rather than nuclear. And yet, the expression “mutually assured destruction” always applies. A trade war – this one with a long -standing ally rather than an adversary – is like a hockey fight in that everyone loses. The only question is how much.
Take the henchmen who fought in Montreal. Instead of playing their hearts for their country, they deliberately put themselves in the penalty box. All pain, no gain. But that's what the henchmen do. They choose performance rather than performance, the show on the contribution, me on us – the exact opposite of what the 1980 legendary Olympic hockey team all about.
Heart men never really win because they shoot others. Of the six that fought in Montreal, Not a marked.
This is what happens when we give our games and governments to the henchmen. Canada and California have too much to lose to leave this, especially at the intersection of the economy and sports. The 2026 World Cup – a joint venture of the United States, Canada and Mexico – Characteristics Seven games At the Sofi stadium in Inglewood. We cannot allow the longest friendly borders in the world to become hostile – to militarize a border Over 34 Korean DMZ.
So how can we get the washer where it is where we want it to be?
We need the good and girls drowning the henchmen and refusing the ridicule 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 an electoral transport the size of a Cali. And do you remember the 2018 steel rates that the first Trump administration was taken from Canada (among others)? You might not, because they had left less than one year. Rationality has won.
Good guys and girls from the National Hockey League and other cross -border sporting events can also help here. If they cannot guarantee mutual respect for our national hymns, find other areas of common field.
Try a moment of silence for our emergency staff. The two nations sent firefighters to respond to devastating fires of the other Last two years. “Good neighbors are still there for each other,” said the Alberta Minister of Forests said While sending firefighters to Los Angeles last month, returning the favor of 2023, when “California firefighters courageously supported Alberta in a period of great need”.
No matter how bad things, no matter the angry words pronounced, regardless of the number of fists thrown away, we are neighbors and friends, and the good and the girls of Canada and California will win. We just need them to talk.
It would now be a good time.
Ml Cavanaugh is the author of the next book “Best Scar Winds: How You Can't more than before.” @Mlcavanaugh
