Cote: Rivalry! Politics! Power shift? NHL is ice on fire with U.S.-Canada in 4 Nations final | Opinion
The NHL and hockey are having a moment. Thursday night’s U.S. vs. Canada championship game in the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament will have the heft and feel of a Stanley Cup Final Game 7 and an Olympics gold-medal bout all together in one watershed night in Boston.
The NBA and basketball are also having a moment, but the kind you would rather forget and move past fast.
The juxtaposition of sports has led to a too-easy and probably false narrative among fans and media this week that the men skating on ice might finally have moved ahead of the men dribbling on hardwood for overall appeal and popularity in America behind only, of course, King Sport football.
The NHL’s surge coinciding with the NBA’s swoon may prove aberrant, or cyclical, both temporary.
Hockey enjoys the immediate excitement and embrace of something refreshing and new in the 4 Nations event, while basketball seems its own worst enemy. TV ratings dip as the NBA suffers through a radically altered and immediately unpopular All-Star Weekend and a growing perception that its entitled players don’t want to play. Adam Silver, once the model for league commissioners, is suddenly a buffoon?
The present narratives could change as the electric spark of the 4 Nations gives way to a resumption of hockey’s regular season, and if basketball gets the exciting, engaging playoffs — the magic-pill medicine — it critically needs.
Meantime the contrast in the two leagues’ directions sees its microcosm in South Florida, where the Florida Panthers ride high as reigning Stanley Cup champions and are contending again, while the Miami Heat slogs out of the All-Star break at 25-28 and has seen local TV ratings plummet a stunning 56 percent., second-worst local market decline in the league.
The Panthers have never been bigger in this market, and the Heat has seldom been more under-radar and meh.
Again: Might be cyclical. Might also be the front side of a tectonic shift in the Greater Miami sports landscape.
For now, hockey’s moment with the success of the 4 Nations Face-Off and its Thursday night crescendo is worth celebrating, and exploring, more than the current NBA malaise is worth lamenting or dwelling upon.
We are seeing the palpable rise of U.S. hockey in real time — with Panthers’ star Matthew Tkachuk and his brother Brady, who plays for Ottawa, at the forefront of it. The brothers are playing on the same team for the first time ever.
“When they got to play that first shift together, it actually was quite emotional. Really, really exciting as a mom to see them out there together,” said their mother Chantal. “[Their father] Keith and I are just pinching ourselves that they’re doing this right now together. It’s just so cool.”
Matthew Tkachuk set the emotional tone in the Americans’ 3-1 victory over Canada on Saturday in Montreal, instigating three fights in the game’s first nine seconds. The U.S. always has been Canada’s lil’ brother in this sport. This time, lil’ brother dropped gloves and came out swinging, and winning.
The night’s volatile atmosphere in Montreal had politics interwoven in it.
Canadians have booed the U.S. national anthem at sporting events ever since President Trump imposed tariffs that included Canada, and did so again Saturday. When the huge turnout of Americans including lots of Panthers fans started a “U-S-A!” chant, the booing resumed.
Team USA fans countered with a short-lived “51” chant, alluding to Trump fomenting the notion of American arrogance by floating the idea of Canada as the 51st U.S. state. (Quick aside: Canada, not in population but in land size, is bigger than the United States.)
Beyond politics, U.S.-Canada always has been an intriguing hockey rivalry for the lopsided dynamic of it.
Canada invented hockey, and Canadian players have always been considered superior to U.S. players. Sure, an NHL team from Canada has not won a Stanley Cup since 1993, but there has never been much argument that our northern neighbor, home of Wayne Gretzky, has produced better players than the U.S.
Indicative of that, Canada has won a record nine Olympic gold medals to only two for the U.S., the last in 1980. That was the “Miracle on Ice” tournament — so coined and so memorable because the Americans winning hockey gold was so stunning.
The 4 Nations Face-Off has rewritten that notion thus far, and another Team USA win over Canada would be seismic in flipping that narrative entirely.
Imagine if a Stanley Cup Final Game 7 and an Olympic gold-medal game collided?
See what that would look like Thursday night in Boston.
This story was originally published February 19, 2025 at 12:04 PM.
