The Need To Knows:
- The Time: 5pm PT
- The Place: TD Garden, Boston, Massachusetts
- Place to Watch: ESPN, ESPN+, SportsNet, TVAS, Disney+ (for some reason)
- Place to Listen: SiriusXM Channel 91 (Subscription service)
- Quick Service Announcement: The rest of this preview and gamethread are going to directly reference the news regarding US-Canadian relations as it pertains to this game. Please be normal or I will be putting you in time out.
Know Your Teams
Canada
- Nathan MacKinnon leads Red and White(ish) in goals this tournament, with 3 in 3 games.
- Sidney Crosby sure loves his international hockey. He leads Canada in points with 5 in 3 games.
- If you’ve been watching these games, you know that Canada’s power play is absolutely lethal, and it should not shock you then to know they lead the tournament in power play success with a 33.3% rate.
- Canada’s goaltending has been predictably a bit…mercurial. Jordan Binnington has started all three of their games, and he’s currently rocking an .892 SV% through three games, with very little to suggest they’re going to move on from him.
United States
- Jake Guentzel has ended up the man with the most goals for the Americans, as he’s got 3 in 3 games.
- Zach Werenski leads the States in points, with 5 assists in 3 games. No goals to be had, but when you get to dish the puck to guys like the Tkachuks, why bother?
- Thanks to an injury to Charlie McAvoy which miiiiiiight have been aggravated by the US medical staff completely misdiagnosing an infection, the US might be calling on Quinn Hughes, who had been in Vancouver as early as [checks notes] …twenty hours ago until he got on a plane to join them.
- While the US and Canada have the same Goals-for per game played at 3.33, the US has the better goal differential at +6.
- Part of the reason why the United States has such a better goal differential than Canada has been Connor Hellebuyck, the man in net for America. He’s played some absolutely incredible goaltender over the past two weeks, having a .957 SV% through two starts.
Game Preview
Here we are. The Championship game. Who’da thunk we’d get here?
Well, maybe we expected the US and Canada, given how talented both are, to be in the championship game. Everything else surrounding it on the other hand…well, let’s go through the tournament.
Team USA and Team Canada with their rosters full of All-Star talent came into the tournament with the intent to show up at it’s final game; and show up they did! Team USA’s games were largely complete blowouts save Team Sweden getting their sole win of the tournament off the backs of a rapidly depleting roster, which otherwise has performed admirably. Team Canada meanwhile had to remind everyone that yes; they are still in fact the favorites walking into this tournament after a rather embarrassing first game between these two sides; where Canada’s offense appeared to be shut off for power saving concerns in the 2nd and 3rd periods. Ever since then however, they’ve made it a point to crush their enemies in spite of the issue in net they’ve faced over and over.
Both teams however, skilled as they are, have wandered by pure accident into the realm of international politics: this championship game has just so happened to fall during the worst two or three week stretch of American-Canadian relations in decades, maybe even centuries if things keep up; tariffs, shattered friendships, booed anthems, threats, it’s been a rough two months for North America in general and this most recent spat has just put a further spotlight on just how far things have gotten.
Which leads us to tonight.
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 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.
Let’s see who wins it all at 5 tonight.