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Verona: Hyped and promoted as the most monumental of ice hockey contests, for Americans and Canadians the gold medal game carried a dimension that had never been evident in past Olympics finales: genuine, as opposed to confected, hostility.
In the four-nation series in Montreal last year, the Canadian crowd had booed the Star Spangled Banner, and there were three full-bore punch-ups in the first nine seconds when the USA and Canada met on the ice.
USA v Canada gold medal match.Credit: Getty Images
The gloves were truly off, as per ice hockey’s pugilistic way. Not just on the ice.
The backdrop was US President Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs on Canada, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s response, invoking “gloves off” as a metaphor for trade retaliation. Canada’s trade deal with China ensued, and angry citizens began to boycott American goods.
Canada, thus, had more to gain, and to lose, as a nation now defined by resistance to a monstrous neighbour. It follows that their disappointment at the overtime defeat at Milan’s Santagiulia Stadium will reverberate for a long time.
The Canadians blew it. The score was the same, 2-1, as in the women’s gold game between the same nations. The hurt from this defeat, however, will endure because unlike their outgunned women, the Canadian men had the game on their own sticks.
The Americans, hanging on for the bulk of the contest, emerged with one telling burst of enterprise in overtime. It is a curious and contentious part of Olympic ice hockey that “OT” turns from 6-on-6 into an unpredictable 3-on-3 contest.
In defiance of the balance of play, Team USA’s Jack Hughes skated clear and delivered one of the more consequential goals in international ice hockey, his superb shot finding the net early in overtime, breaking the 1-1 tie for the most golden of goals.
“I can’t believe this,” said Hughes, who copped a teeth-ratting (or removing) jolt late in the game. His words summed up precisely how millions of Canadians felt.
Jack Hughes scores the winning goal against Canada.Credit: AP
His brother Quinn, a defenceman, had scored the OT winner for the USA in their semi-final escape against Sweden.
The Canadians had the larger, or certainly louder, contingent in the stands, as many booed the USA team – some of whom play for Canadian NHL teams – when the Americans first skated onto the rink.
Hughes delivered the money shot, but the greatest American hero was USA’s goalie, Connor Hellebuyck, who had 41 saves from 42 shots in less than 62 minutes of play.
The game was frenetically physical, especially in the opening period, without the biffo that erupted in the four-nations event. In Australian terms, it fell in the “hard, but fair” genre.
Trump, despite speculation, did not make the trip to Milan for the face-off. In his place was FBI director Kash Patel, and the requisite retinue of celebrities, headed by ice hockey’s greatest, Wayne Gretzky, a Canadian who spent the latter two-thirds of his career in American skates with the Los Angeles Kings and New York Rangers.
Canada had beaten the USA in two previous gold medal games, 2002 and 2010. The USA, which also had a team filled with NFL mega-dollar players, had not taken gold in men’s hockey since the famed “Miracle on Ice” of 1980, when an American non-NHL amateur team slew the Soviet Union, as Cold War politics intersected with Olympic sport (the USA boycotted the 1980 Moscow Summer Games).
The Canadian men’s defeat can – and will – forever be measured by their sheer failure to convert. By the end of regular time, they’d had 40 shots to USA’s 25. The Americans remained level, in large measure due to goalie Hellebuyck.
Team USA celebrate victory.Credit: AP
There were egregious misses, none more costly than one late in the third period from Nathan MacKinnon, who had a rare open net and just the goalie to beat. He missed. The USA kept Canada at bay in each of three power plays, even when one short.
“You be the judge of who was the better team today,” MacKinnon quipped after the match – a comment that drew criticism from some American media.
Canada had been deprived of their captain, Sidney Crosby, one of Gretzky’s heirs, but had more than enough depth to compensate.
The White House was triumphant, also mocking Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, who had written on X after Canada’s four nations victory (3-2), “you can’t take our country – and you can’t take our game”. The White House tweeted an American Eagle throttling another bird over Trudeau’s 2025 comment after the game.
The Americans haven’t taken Canada. They have, to the chagrin of 41 million Canadians, taken their gold.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
