Connor McDavid scored the opening goal of Team Canada's hotly anticipated 4 Nations game in Montreal on Saturday night, but it wasn't enough for a home-team victory. The Canadians would go on to surrender two in response on frustrating mistakes, then find themselves locked up by conservative defense as an empty-netter made the final score 3-1. Nevertheless, a date with Finland to end the round-robin stage on Monday afternoon still gives them hope, as a win would likely propel them into a Thursday night final weighted with the possibility of revenge.
Not a lot of hockey games start like this one did, as the rowdy Tkachuk boys and the rowdy Canuck boys announced the intensity of their competitiveness from the moment the puck dropped. Brandon Hagel had a ferocious fight with Matthew Tkachuk just two seconds in, and after the officials pulled the two off the ice and put them in the penalty box, Brady Tkachuk and Canada's Sam Bennett sabotaged the attempt to restore order. Officially three seconds into the game, the refs cleared out so the two could consensually hit each other until Brady executed a tackle on Bennett. A tiny bit of hockey happened after those penalty minutes appeared on the box score. But when Canada goalie Jordan Binnington froze the puck with 19:51 on the clock, it was JT Miller and St. Albert's own Colton Parayko whose tempers boiled over, with Parayko using his size to hold off Miller's assault until the two were exhausted.
There were no more fights from this point on, and not even any penalties in the second or third. The actual playing of the scheduled sport allowed Connor McDavid to do what he does best—play the sport. Just as the crowd had caught its breath from the early commotion, the Oilers stud took a nice pass out of the defensive zone from Drew Doughty and caught the defenders flat-footed, racing across the blue line and past Charlie McAvoy for a thrilling goal.
But that was really the last thing to cheer. Jake Guentzel scored a softie on Binnington five minutes after McDavid's goal, and in the middle period, an unfortunate O-zone turnover by Sidney Crosby opened up a two-on-one fast break and ultimately a GWG for Dylan Larkin—the goal that would break Sid's 26-game win streak in a Canada jersey.
It's a little tough to make sense of this tournament, because it feels so fragmented and isolated. With the Olympics devoid of NHLers, the advertising for this event has called it the first best-on-best (male) international clash since the World Cup of Hockey in 2016, so there's no real continuity. At best, it's a warm-up to remind us what these games can look like ahead of a rejuvenated Olympic tournament in 2026. But also, the absences make the 4 Nations feel like an incomplete sample—not just intriguing foes like Czechia and Germany but also Russia, who is well represented in the NHL but unwelcome on the international stage because of its invasion-happy leader who suppresses dissent and demonizes minorities.
Other fascist countries have to be beaten, symbolically, on the ice. Even though Canada failed once on Saturday, there's a built-in reset here. All it takes to press that button is a regulation win over Finland, or an OT win if Sweden can't win theirs in 60. If Canada can finish second among the four teams after Monday, they get to go down to Boston to play the game that really matters: the last one. Get there, and the situation will be set up just like the 2010 Olympics, where the Canadian men lost in the group stage to this same rival and found revenge with an overtime gold-medal triumph. The bruises from Saturday will heal. But the winner on Thursday will not be forgotten.
