Hockey: Canada sink USA in 4 Nations Face-Off final on McDavid's sudden-death goal

[cbabe]

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/feb/20/canada-usa-hockey-final-connor-mcdavid-overtime

Canada sink USA in 4 Nations Face-Off final on McDavid’s sudden-death goal

20 Feb 2025 23.39 EST

When they played O Canada for the second time, there were no American fans left in the arena to boo.

Instead, the Canadian team stood at the blue line, arm in arm, player and coach, wearing their championship hats while the maple leaf flag was lowered behind the 4 Nations Face-Off trophy and the national anthem reverberated across the Americans’ home ice. The fans who remained, many of them in their red Team Canada jerseys, sang along.

Connor McDavid scored at 8:18 of overtime to give Canada a 3-2 victory over the United States on Thursday night as the North American rivals turned what had been a tune-up for the 2026 Olympics into a geopolitical brawl over anthems and annexation as much as international hockey supremacy.

Or, to put it another way: It was the 51st US state 3, Canada’s 11th province 2.

“You can’t take our country – and you can’t take our game,” Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau posted on X in a cross-border callback to US president Donald Trump’s chatter about turning one of the United States’ closest allies into a 51st state. Earlier Thursday, Trump had called him ‘Governor Trudeau’.

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