We Need To Talk About It: USA vs Canada
Hockey stole the weekend with the Four Nations Spectacle and I couldn't be happier.
(Sean is off the grid this week, so presented without editing! - Forgive my grammatical failings)
I know us “hockey people” can be annoying sometimes. We have the ability to really love our sport and to not always understand why it hasn’t fully caught on with everyone. Our guys – who are the very best in the world at what they do – are less famous and definitely less wealthy and we can tell you the big storylines in our sport and often just get blank stares back.
We are used to it. We know that while we love this sport dearly, it is also not treated as a top-tier sport. It still remains a niche to many, especially here down South, and we live with it. Most casuals will care when our team is good enough for a Cup run, but since those are rare, many people pick this sport up a few times a decade and then ignore the rest of it as a general rule.
But, holy cow, we are right in the middle of one of our times where our sport is turning some heads and it is enough to make me drop everything and make sure you aren’t missing it.
Now, I confess, most of my hockey consumption is through the lens of the Dallas Stars. And, because of that, the relationship we have with USA Hockey is different than it used to be. When the Stars moved to Dallas, it was extra easy to move smoothly from the Stars over to the Stars-and-Stripes, because Mike Modano, Derian Hatcher, and even Brett Hull were all front and center on both.
Of course, in this generation, our USA hockey stars include Jake Oettinger, Jason Robertson, and Thomas Harley. Oettinger is watching Connor Hellebuyck play a very high level of goal these days. Robertson did not make the team for reasons that we will get to in a moment. And Harley is doing what Hull did three decades ago, which is playing with dual-citizenship and when one nation decided to pass on his services, he joined up with the other side and stuck with them because they wanted him first. With Hull, a kid who was born in Canada to an American mother, Canada passed on him so he wore the red, white, and blue his entire career to raised eyebrows over the border. Now Harley is doing the same thing. Born in Syracuse to a Canadian father, but when USA Hockey decided to pass on him as a U17 and Canada called, he has remained loyal to them.
So, granted, it feels a bit different in this Hockey Four Nations event to have several Dallas Stars - four if Miro Heiskanen was healthy – playing for Finland and Thomas Harley actually in for Canada, but no significant presence for USA Hockey from a DFW perspective.
But, still, I am USA Hockey through and through and there is no amount of Dallas Stars influence that will change that for me and I assume 99% of you, too.
Allow me to digress.