Leave it out on the ice. Leave no doubt.
International hockey events like this, like the Olympics, and yes, like the World Cup of Hockey when they care to put them on, are a once in a great while kind of thing. Even if the NHL swears up and down that the Stanley Cup is the hardest trophy to win, someone wins it every year without fail. That’s not true at the Olympics, or the World Cup.
You may miss your shot at representing your country forever, or even end up missing just because of a stupid thing like a dislocated digit, or even worse; the guy getting to pick the team isn’t very smart or carries a lot of their national team’s mental baggage. Anyone who gets picked for these kinds of non-annual events, be they played once, twice, or every four years, is going to play their ass off because when are they ever going to have that shot again.
This game was always going to mean something for Team Canada, who has been through a lot lately as a program and as a country, and does not have a whole lot of Sidney Crosby left to carry, and it was going to mean a lot for Team USA, who has been slowly rising to the level of Canada for years now, and wants to prove that point at the highest stage imaginable.
All of that outside stuff? As much as the teams will try to brush it off in the moment, it does add up. It will feed into how they respond to a hooting and hollering Boston crowd. It will feed into how many Canadians choose to come down to America to heckle the National Anthem. It will feed into how loud and long the USA chants last. It will bleed into this game that two sides were already going to be amped up for.
So, maybe against their will and against what the league expected, this game will matter. It will matter a lot.
So, with all that preamble…let’s just hope for a good clean game. 60 more minutes of best-on-best. Leave it all out on the ice. Leave no room for interpretation or doubt.
Also please for god’s sake be normal in this thread, okay?