On a long enough time scale and if the sport is widely popular, a country tends to lose its dominance in a sport it creates. England ceded soccer long ago. The U.S. is, perhaps, in the process of losing its unquestioned position as the supreme basketballing nation. Canada, not for the first time and certainly not the last, faces a reckoning with its place in the hockey world. Since the fall of the U.S.S.R., the top of the sport has become more European, increasingly global, and, above all else, creepingly American. A smaller percentage of NHL players are from Canada than ever before, and more of the best players are from the U.S., as the league has expanded below the border and contracted above it. It's a numbers game, and if it isn't reflected in relative culture cachet, it'll become apparent by who raises the trophies in international competition. Canada may well lose its iron grip on hockey—but not yet.
Team Canada re-expressed its dominion with a 3-2 overtime win over the U.S. in the final of the 4 Nations Face-Off, a totally made-up all-star replacement that almost accidentally stumbled its way into becoming a geopolitical referendum, and served as emphatic notice that the sport is still Canada's to lose. I won't drag out this blog before giving you the climactic goal, the one that'll be replayed for years and years. And because the champions wear red maple leaves, you get the Chris Cuthbert call:
Canada couldn't have scripted it better than Connor McDavid taking the torch from Sidney Crosby with his own overtime winner 15 years later. The U.S. probably would have scripted it better than leaving the best player on Earth all alone in the slot, to take a perfect pass from Mitch Marner. “The second he got it, I was like, ‘Yep. There you go,'" said Cale Makar. It was a rare mistake by either side in one of the most finely played games you'll ever see.
As a referendum on the state of hockey and a showcase for casual fans, the final delivered. The action was impossibly fast and improbably clean both ways, with the scariest scorers in the business creating chances out of nothing, and two lockdown defenses smothering most opportunities out of hand. Wherever an opening developed, it seemed, there was Jaccob Slavin, Team USA's clear MVP, to put out the fire. Same deal on the other end, where the U.S. was forced into bad-angle shot after bad-angle shot, because anything in the danger zone was promptly swallowed up. Puck movement was crisp, stickwork was confident. Hits were clean and effective. It was a clinic that only finally loosened up in overtime, as tired legs began to tell. We've talked a lot about best-on-best at this tournament. This was the best of the best-on-best.
The pucks that did get through were not the result of lapses, but rather those inevitable messy goals that happen no matter the skill level. Nathan MacKinnon opened the scoring with a seeing-eye goal through traffic that Connor Hellebuyck never quite saw. Brady Tkachuk equalized with a deflected shot in front off Auston Matthews's wraparound dump. After one period, tied. Jake Sanderson pounced on a rebound to give the U.S. the lead. Sam Bennett finished off one of the game's infrequent rushes with a beauty of a roofer. After two periods, tied. The third frame ratcheted up the tension but offered fewer opportunities, as no one wanted to make the error that gave the tournament away, and both goalies were up to the challenges they did face. After 60 minutes, tied.
A thing I can't get over was just how close this game was. Just when it looked like one team or other might be asserting an advantage, the action would swing the other way. These two rosters could play each other in a best-of-three, or a best-of-seven, or, why not, a best-of-15, and there's a great chance it'd still come down to a single overtime. "We've proved tonight and to everyone that we're right there with Canada," Zach Werenski said, and if that comes across as consolation, it's one hell of a consolation to go neck-and-neck with the best team in the world.
The difference, the razor-thin edge that had Canada lifting the mini-cup, was Jordan Binnington, the most maligned player in this tournament and the purest redemption story. Held up as proof of Canada's crisis in goaltending, the mercurial Binnington played four capable games and in the final looked like his 2019 Cup-winning self, and not like the Binnington of ... well, all other times. In overtime, as things got a little more north-south and the U.S. had some real good looks to win it, Binnington saved every puck and all of Canada.
When "O Canada" played for the second time, at the victory ceremony, there were no boos. The American fans had left the building.
"And yeah, did we need a win?" Team Canada head coach Jon Cooper said, alluding to everything this game had come to represent. "Not only our team, but Canada needed a win, and the players bared that on their shoulders. This one was different. This wasn’t a win for themselves, this was a win for 40-plus million people, and the guys knew it and they delivered.”
For the U.S., moral victories may ring hollow in the moment, but they could resound over generations. Small things lead to big changes. In 1996, the year of the U.S.'s last best-on-best championship, the NHL put a team in Phoenix. The next year, a Mexican-American family moved to town with their infant son and took him to games. He was entranced not by the sport but by the Zamboni, as kids will. But that led to an affection for hockey and he grew up playing it, and was identified and trained by the nascent NTDP, and became the NHL's best scorer and captain of the national team that came within one goal of dethroning Canada. It wasn't quite enough, but these things runs in cycles. What children were captivated staying up late for last night's game? Who will this tournament inspire?
It sucks to lose. It sucks extra hard to have been co-favorites and lose; the U.S. is too good a hockey country now to be playing with house money. "We expect to win, and we expect to be in the gold medal games," Werenski said. "We expect to win now." That in itself is an achievement in the long run. We're finally good enough to disappoint.
Only 349 days until the puck drops at the Olympics.
