Outside of the Winter Olympics, international tournaments in ice hockey do not have a high profile. There was an exception this weekend. There is currently a 4 Nations tournament going on between Finland, Sweden, Canada and USA - featuring most of the best professional players from the NHL. And yesterday we had the big border rivalry matches: Finland vs Sweden and Canada vs "Team USA". And I happened to catch quite a lot of both games. Finland vs Sweden was good - it was airing early in order to be on during prime time in Europe, and went to overtime with the underdog Fins winning. But then Canada vs US was even better. The game was being held in Montreal, and so there was a bit of a partisan crowd. And when I say a bit, I mean a lot. Thanks to Trump's tariffs and his talk of making Canada a US state (I would fight alongside my commonwealth brethren to stop that ever happening), the atmosphere was electric. The US national anthem was heartily booed - unusual for the normally mild-mannered Canadians. And then we had 3 fights in the first 9 seconds of the game! Ice hockey is great in still allowing fights - the refs only stepping in when the fighters go down to the ice. And generally it was a really competitive, hard-hitting, brutal game that the US managed to win. There is still a chance of another Canada vs USA game in the final of the tournament - bring it on.
