In a clip from ESPN sports-talk program Get Up that went viral last week, former National Hockey League player PK Subban " target="_blank" class="link"> weighed in on the differences between NHL hockey culture and the culture in the NBA. Usually, comparing the two – the smallest of North America’s big four pro sports leagues – is a game of numbers: revenue, viewers, salaries, that kind of thing. But over the past 10 days, passion has emerged as a new key differentiator. “You can step onto an NBA floor and go through the motions,” Subban said on ESPN. “You can’t do that in hockey – you can’t. Like, the culture of our sport, you have to play it with passion. You have to be willing to fight. You have to be willing to leave it on the ice. That’s what fans are investing in.”
That investment has paid off most recently with the 4 Nations Face-off tournament, which wrapped up on Thursday night in Boston. The thrilling final between Canada and the US was a rematch of last Saturday’s marquee round-robin clash, a contest marked by three fights in the opening nine seconds. The rest of the game was pretty good, too, ending with a US win. On Thursday, the tables turned. It was Canada that scored first – again – and last. Canada won the game narrowly 3-2, after the US left Connor McDavid, the best player on the planet, open in the slot in sudden-death overtime. He made no mistake.
One of the reasons Subban was on ESPN in the first place was because of that first Canada-US game. Its intensity seemed to surprise Americans unfamiliar with the longstanding rivalry, or hockey more generally. Indeed, Subban’s mention of the NBA was no accident. It was the other reason he was on the show. Basketball fans couldn’t help but notice the difference between how little interest NBA players had shown in that league’s All Star game over the weekend compared to the ferocity with which NHLers were competing in their mid-season showcase. But then again, the NBA also didn’t have Donald Trump in the mix. Trump’s timely geopolitical intervention – the cross-border forays of potential tariffs and counter-tariffs and his increasingly blunt threats against the border’s existence – was a much more unpredictable and meaningful surprise than any gimmick even the smartest NBA marketing whiz could have dreamed up for its All-Star weekend.
Earlier this week, USA Hockey general manager (and former NHLer) Bill Guerin told Fox News that the team “would love it if President Trump was in attendance” at the final. Trump declined, but on Thursday morning in a post on Truth Social, he said he planned to call the US hockey team “to spur them towards victory tonight against Canada, which with FAR LOWER TAXES AND MUCH STRONGER security will someday, maybe soon, become our cherished, and very important, Fifty First State”. It’s roughly here that the fun stops. As much as the tense atmosphere rewarded the NHL and hockey fans with a more intense game, you get the sense that this all worked out pretty well for Trump, too. Another opportunity to broadcast his deranged plans and make something about him. We didn’t need him. Canada-US games have always been exciting – the " target="_blank" class="link"> 1996 World Cup between the two, vicious; the " target="_blank" class="link"> 2002 Olympic gold medal game, cathartic; " target="_blank" class="link"> 2010, a heart-stopper. Trump’s impact, as is always the case, was to bring renewed focus on a dividing line, not to bridge it but to deepen it.
But you can see why it worked. The foundation of this hockey rivalry has always been rooted in something greater, something felt but that remains unseen. Just like most other sports rivalries, only a fraction of its foundation lies directly beneath the game itself, with the rest buried deeper in history – or, in this case, in the snow. Canada v USA is really about an inherently unbalanced relationship that for two centuries or so has seen the smaller of the two partners defending itself in all manner of speaking. Through it all, hockey has been one of its few enduring emblems of territorial supremacy – evidence it can present to the world at regular intervals to prove that it has not yet been totally subsumed, culturally or politically, by its neighbor (or neighbour). “I think we’re out there playing for the flag, not the cameras,” Team Canada forward Brandon Hagel said this week. “That’s a part of Canada that we have in there.”
Yet, at the same time, hockey is one of Canada’s most effective tools of soft power. It would be overstating it to say that the x-factor Subban was talking about – that thing that most agree after watching the 4 Nations Face-off seems to be missing from other North American sports cultures – is Canadians. But it would not be wrong to suggest that what all those other leagues might lack is Canadian-ness. The tenacity and drive to compete against all odds – to literally fight when called to. This thing that hockey has and others don’t could only have come from up here, somewhere along this northern territory. Trump can try to co-opt hockey into his skewed vision of America, but the reality is that no matter where you’re from, when you step onto the ice, something about you will always be Canadian.
