After Trump-fueled brawls, Canada-US renew Olympic hockey rivalry

Key Highlights

• The hockey tournament quickly took on outsized significance.– 'Awesome hockey' –AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementCanadians started booing the US national anthem at sporting events. American hockey players took exception, leading to three fights in the early seconds of a US–Canada preliminary round game. Trump then called the US team before the final, which Canada won in overtime."It was awesome hockey," Nash said.
• "I think we created a lot of momentum, a lot of buildup, going into these Olympics.""I feel like we gained a lot of new fans from that whole tournament," he added. That list may include Trump himself."How good were those games!" the president said to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the White House in October, nine months after the tournament, suggesting the slugfest made an impression. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"I'm not the biggest hockey fan," Trump said, but he called the US–Canada showdowns some of the greatest games he'd seen.– 'Canadian tears' –The United States and Canada may not play each other at the Milan-Cortina Olympics, although both sides are heavily favored to make the medal round. If they do meet, the game would add to a rivalry older than the Winter Olympics, which began in 1924. In the spring of 1920, ahead of the Antwerp Summer Games, organizers held a hockey tournament in the Belgian city, part of an early Olympic festival. The European teams got demolished. Canada beat Czechoslovakia 15–0 and the United States beat Sweden 29–0, astonishing scores in hockey. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAhead of the April 25 US–Canada match, "people are jamming the streets before the game," as Belgians devised ways to sneak into a sold-out rink, Zweig said."Everybody knows this is going to be the best hockey game ever played in Europe."Canada won 2-0 but over the 20th Century, the intensity of the North American Olympic rivalry eased. The Soviet Union, and later Russia, became Canada's main adversary and the NHL, growing as a professional league, did not send its players to the Olympics until 1998. Nash, born in 1984, said that for him Russia was the biggest test growing up, but things began to shift when the United.