Almost every day is a tradeoff between satisfaction and punch-bowl turds. Find a great parking spot in front of the place you want to go? There's a ticket on the windshield when you return. Good work review from the boss? Unpaid overtime the night before a holiday weekend. Winning at the card table? The last hand brings a bad beat that reallocates your winnings to someone else. When Devin Cooley received congratulations for a good game in goal for the Calgary Flames two years ago, he famously said, "Nothing's really gonna matter. We're all gonna die." Even now, he is among the most famous hockey players to non-hockey fans for that fascinating worldview. That fame, and that darkly realistic approach, didn't prevent him from getting injured last week.
But Tuesday was that rarest of events—a grand day in politics. The reigning goblins got routed in nearly every way and seemingly every race, although meat slab impersonator Tommy Tuberville still won his Alabama governor's race and Mark Teixeira narrowly won his congressional race. It was great on its face, and also for all the devastated expressions that came with those losses; it is a good day when all the worst people are sad. Very nearly as satisfying, the Canadian government committed itself to a decision that made Prime Minister Mark Carney look as good as the election down here must have made him feel.
Carney stood strong in the face of Canada's national addiction, hockey, to tell the Court of Arbitration for Sport to take a hike on its decision to allow Russia to play in the World Juniors Tournament that begins the day after Christmas in Edmonton and Red Deer, Alberta. Nearly half the 16 nations scheduled to play in the world championships in Germany in May have also said they won't participate if the Russians are allowed.
The Russians have been kept out of international events because of their invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and brutalization of it in the years since, and that suspension had been extended in 2023, '24, '25, and '26 because the war has not abated. They were surprisingly readmitted to good standing for this competition by the CAS, which "found that the [International Ice Hockey Federation] arguments citing safety, security and other concerns were not supported by sufficient evidence." The IIHF expressed its displeasure but accepted the ruling, but within a couple of days Finland, Sweden, Norway, Czechia, Denmark, and Latvia all announced that they would not play any scheduled games against the Russians. Carney said Tuesday in a televised speech that Russian players would not be allowed to play for their countries in Canada.
In addition, the tournament's principal sponsor, Skoda, is expected to pull out of the event if the Russians are allowed to play in a relocated tournament. Other sponsors have already opted out or have asked that their logos not to be shown in the arenas, citing the war and the growing boycott.
This is a rare example of nations and companies scrapping plans to make money because some suits have decided to act against humanity's best interests. Even the IIHF was stunned by the backlash, releasing a statement with the telling phrase, "The global impact of the decision made by the CAS Panel and the challenges it creates for all involved were significantly underestimated." The word "significantly" is risking a hernia for the work it is being asked to do here.
That is, of course, because sports organizations don't normally make decisions based on anything but an assessment of the truffles of money involved and how many pigs it would take to root them out; national leaders tend overwhelmingly to vote with the pigs. The result is a series of surprises culminating in that rarest of things—national leaders voting with the conscience their nations imagine themselves to have in their best moments. And as a 30 percent tip on the bill, Carney looks principled and strong while his bete noire to the south has never looked worse. It is genuinely a win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win-win proposition, even without the extra hockey to watch.
While we are still in the outrage stage, a firm resolution on this is still pending. It wouldn't surprise us if our blockhead-in-chief offered to take the world juniors just to embarrass Carney, and saw that embarrassment rebound instantly onto the wielder. It would, among other things, be on brand. But these are still unknowns.
Still, yesterday was such a good day for Canada's view of itself, in fact, that its most downtrodden citizens, the Winnipeg Jets, rallied from a 4-0 deficit by tying the game in the final two minutes and 39 seconds of their game, before breaking their nine-game losing streak in overtime. That it happened against Montreal is of little consequence, save the reminder that no good time goes totally unpunished. The Canadiens are good and will get over this irksome blip, but this is Winnipeg's first real moment of joy since trading Connor Hellebuyck, and, when combined with the nation righteously scratching its ethical itch, makes for a spectacular day for a country that has had to put up with being on the wrong end of Trump's short-attention span nonsense for two years now. Enjoy the day, our northward friends. They almost never go this well.
