AS I SEE IT COLUMN: Ohh Canada

Heartbreak. Anguish. Grief. Despair. Disbelief. After 12 long years of eagerly waiting for best-on-best Olympic hockey, the hockey gods had it in for the clearly superior Canadian squad. Our arch rivals beat us in overtime, proving that sport, like life, isn’t always fair.

Team USA needed a miracle to win their last gold medal in 1980 and they needed another miracle to win Olympic gold in 2026.

Canada was clearly the better team. No rational hockey fan could look at that gold medal game and say the best team won.

If it was a best of seven series, Canada would win decisively. (Speaking of which, let’s have another Summit Series like we had in 1972, only this time it should be Canada versus the U.S. It would be epic.)

Sure, there will be pockets of joy in the states, but the U.S. victory will largely go unnoticed by the vast majority of Americans. In most U.S. markets hockey is 5th or 6th in TV ratings, frequently beaten out by professional bowling and college fastball. They don’t eat and breathe hockey like we do here in Canada.

Nearly our entire nation was emotionally invested in the gold medal game.

Credit Connor Hellebuyck for a great game. The irony doesn’t get much more bitter than this: For years he has broken the hearts of Jets fans with his lousy play in the playoffs (after playing so well during the regular season). Now he has broken our hearts again by single-handedly beating Team Canada for Olympic gold. That he can steal a game for America but not for the Jets, hurts in a complicated way.

As empty as we feel as a nation, we still have the best players in the world. Connor McDavid was amazing. He, Cellebrini and MacKinnon were a joy to watch. And even though he didn’t play in Canada’s last two games, Sidney Crosby’s stature in Canada rose to a whole new level in Milan. If we’re lucky and the NHL puts on another 4 Nations tournament and maybe even a World Cup of Hockey in a couple of years, we’ll get to see Captain Canada represent our nation again in international hockey.

Looked at solely through the prism of hockey, the game was close only on the scoreboard. Other than the first four minutes of the game, we were the vastly superior team. By any hockey metric, we dominated them. Team USA’s stars were pretty much invisible (except for Hellebuyck), while our stars shone brightly.

Looked at through the prism of geo-politics, this was much more than a game. Most of the US players openly support Trump. They support someone who attacks Canada and imposes punishing tariffs on us. They support someone who bombed seven countries in the last year, kidnapped the leader of Venezuela, and sent armed ICE agents into American cities that killed two citizens. They support someone who is aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. They support someone who violently tried to overthrow an election he knew he lost. They support someone who is threatening war against Iran. They support someone who is mentioned thousands of times in the Epstein files.

Several American Olympians expressed displeasure about Trump’s America, but not the hockey players. They love the convicted felon.

In that broader political context, the gold medal contest wasn’t just a game; it was a clash of values. The loss hurts so much precisely because the U.S. team proudly represented a president to which history will not be kind.

In the end, the final score doesn’t really matter to Canadians who are passionate about hockey. We love our players who put everything on the line for their country, no matter where we end up in a tournament.

In sport we are told to focus on the process, not the outcome. The outcome in Milan sucked, but the process was glorious to watch. Team Canada gave everything they had, right to the bitter, gut-wrenching end.

Our love of the game isn’t tied to final results; it runs much deeper than that. We don’t need to win to care profoundly. Our passion is unconditional, eternal. An Olympic silver medal does nothing to diminish that fact.

Team Canada’s players and their millions of supporters should be filled with pride.