Boston

Of course it blew straight into overtime. How could it not? This crazy, fresh-baked hockey tournament with four teams and a funny name, assembled from the ions as an NHL showcase, had somehow become the most riveting theater in North America over the past week—an All-Star series, boxing melee and border tussle all in one. 

Naturally, its championship needed to conclude with hockey’s unmatched, stomach-churning theater: sudden death.

And it finished with Canada as the victor, 3-2, over a feisty Team USA which talked the talk—and very nearly skated the skate. 

When I tell you this title game in Boston could have gone either way: It could have gone either way, many times. The U.S. had its chances, including in OT. Canada had one more, and it went to the player many consider the best on the planet, Connor McDavid, who blazed a shot past the brilliant U.S. goaltender Connor Hellebuyck for the game-winner and series-ender. 

Canada won…more than anyone imagined? The “4 Nations Face-Off” was a made-up idea with a quartet of teams (USA, Canada, Finland, Sweden) and zero tradition, but pulling on those national sweaters clearly animated the participants. You could see it in the committed physicality of the play—and the postgame happiness of NHL millionaires like McDavid and Team Canada captain Sidney Crosby and winning goaltender Jordan Binnington (31 saves).

“Not a gold medal or anything like that,” McDavid said when it was over. “But it means the world to our group.”

This thing had been a saga since Saturday, when an animated Team USA went into Montreal, dropped its gloves (three fights in the opening nine seconds, all preplanned over text message) and grabbed a 3-1 win. 

A hockey exhibition ignited into something very real, with the added tingle of geopolitics. Montreal fans, growly about the U.S. president’s talk about tariffs and annexing Canada as the 51st state, lustily booed the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

All-Star game? This was no stinkin’ All-Star game. Hockey was delivering something far more potent. 

When Canada rebounded to make Thursday’s final a rematch, anticipation soared. News outlets accustomed to White House coverage veered into giddy hockey talk. Team USA took a phone call from President Trump in the morning. 

The tournament’s Zeitgeist ascent was stunning. The hockey crazies were onboard, of course, but by game time, the bandwagon Zamboni had taken on the hockey-casuals, hockey-nevers and what-is-hockeys, too. 

In Boston, despite an admonition from the PA announcer, and the presence of many visiting fans, they did boo “O Canada.” 

Still, the evening’s tension felt more like good-natured theater than actual hatred. Nosebleeds for the 4 Nations finale were going for $1,000 on the secondary market—this crowd was too fancy to fight.

Walking inside, there wasn’t a whiff of the menace you’ll get in a Euro football rivalry or even your standard NFL parking lot. A Canada die-hard held up a sign: WELCOME TO THE USA, CANADA’S 11TH PROVINCE. 

What hockey fan could truly despise Canada? The country is inseparable from the game; most of its legends hail from its frigid rink hamlets. Outside TD Garden in Boston is a massive statue of one of the best: Bobby Orr of Parry Sound, Ontario, immortalized in triumph, body horizontal, stick high, as done in 1970 to win the NHL Bruins a Stanley Cup.   

Boston didn’t boo Wayne Gretzky, when the Great One was introduced as Team Canada’s honorary captain. Team USA somehow emotionally one-upped his arrival with a local who didn’t play an NHL minute: Mike Eruzione, captain of the “Miracle on Ice” 1980 Olympic Team. 

Eruzione wore the jersey of Johnny Gaudreau, aka “Johnny Hockey,” the Team USA star who had been struck and killed by an automobile driver, along with his brother, Matthew, over the summer. 

In the end, it turned into a hockey game. Not a barroom brawl, like those rowdy early seconds of the opener, and not a spicy feud with an electrocurrent of politics. It was hockey, and Canada is good at it, as they have been forever. They are the peak of the sport internationally, and remain so, despite Team USA’s relentless charge. 

This U.S. team—they appeared ready to pull it off. There was no text message WrestleMania this time, but emotionally, they were on it from the jump. They cranked Skynyrd’s “Freebird” after a first-period game-tying goal from Brady Tkachuk—another Brady, pulling off sporting magic in New England—and again when a Jake Sanderson rebound in the second gave Team USA a 2-1 lead. 

As the game drifted into OT, fans tried to summon a U.S. winner by chanting Gaudreau’s nickname: John-ny Hock-ey.  

Hockey really found something here. This 4 Nations Face-Off was effectively an extended preview for the 2026 Winter Olympics, where NHL players will be allowed to participate for the first time since 2014. What observer doesn’t want to see Team Canada and Team USA renew their tangle in 12 months in Milan? Si grazie.

It wasn’t the Olympics, a World Cup, or even a previously-known honor, but Thursday oozed with the special sauce every sport wants: meaning. You could see it in the eyes of the dejected U.S. players, leaning up against the boards, watching Canada celebrate McDavid’s winner. You could see it in the exhausted, ebullient Canadians, lifting a newfangled trophy they didn’t quite comprehend. 

They cared. That, plus sudden death overtime—what more could anyone ask?