pc28����

Trump is a blustering buffoon, but he is one of the two most dangerous buffoons in the world, and the threat is real and even existential right now. So Thursday night in Montreal, Bell Centre public address announcer Michel Lacroix asked the crowd to respect the anthems “in the spirit of this great game that unites everyone,” and the Quebecois crowd booed the American anthem anyway.�� Sportsnet cameras caught Tkachuk at the end of the American bench looking like someone about to start a brawl in a bar parking lot, and he said after the game he didn’t like it. On Sportsnet, oddly, the booing was much quieter than video from inside the arena. Hmm.

Some Canadian players or coaches tried to tamp everything down, too. Brad Marchand told reporters the crowd shouldn’t boo the U.S. players, because they have nothing to do with the U.S.-Canada split. Canadian coach Jon Cooper said much the same thing.

“We hope (booing Saturday night) doesn’t happen,” said Cooper. “People have their personal feelings, and sometimes it gets mushed together when you bring politics into sports. And for me, the NHL is great, because there’s so many different players from so many different countries, and ... Willy Nylander got booed in the Sweden game. They weren’t booing him because he’s a Swede; they were booing him because he’s a Leaf. And I’m OK with that.

“But when you start bringing the anthem and the politics into that, the players are representing their country��— and it’s great in that aspect —��but to me, you’re clouding two issues. And I just think everybody should come here and cheer for the great game, and just kind of leave that part out of it ... these countries have been around way before us, and I think we should respect that.”

Yes, the players are representing��their countries. Yes, Montreal boos Leafs more than anyone and, hell, has booed their share of anthems over the years. And no, the players don’t really have much to do with geopolitics right now, though Tkachuk smiled pretty wide when the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers visited Trump’s White House.

But the booing isn’t about the players, Leafs perhaps aside. When Cooper says we should respect the histories of our nations, he’s so close. The President of the United States is explicitly saying he would prefer Canada not exist any more, and that transcends the idea of Canada versus the United States in hockey, but it’s also directly linked to this game and every game these two nations have ever played.

Because what do we celebrate when Sidney Crosby returns to view, grey and worn and still one of the great Canadians to ever put on the sweater? What do we celebrate when Connor McDavid plays like he’s shot out of a supernova, somehow faster than the fastest player we’ve ever seen? What do we celebrate when Nathan MacKinnon flies, when Cale Makar glides, when Drew Doughty is grateful?

That they’re representing their country, and that means representing the nation that produced every player we’ve ever had, and which is being threatened. Of course hockey can be political: the U.S. still lionizes the 1980 Olympic Miracle On Ice, and in Canada we celebrate the Summit Series. As Phil Esposito once said: “(The Summit Series) became political, and it became political very quickly. Not only the Russians; the Canadian government, too. It became society against society. Not that we wanted it, not that we realized it was going to be that way, but it did. So for me anyway, it was almost like war.”

The players may not grasp it, but you could argue that Canada versus the United States right now is more political than the Summit Series ever was. Because no matter whether Paul Henderson scored that goal or not, there was never really a question of whether Canada would cease to exist.

That’s changed. If the players can’t be expected to understand this, Canadians can. The United States has become a threat to our way of life, and if Canadians don’t boo to show we’ll resist, we’ll never boo anything. The hockey game’s big. Country’s bigger.