By Eleanor O’Hagan
Senior Staff Writer
This year the National Hockey League decided to bring an alternative format to the typical All-Star Game. The 2025 and 2026 seasons for hockey are having what is called the Four-Nations tournament. The 2025 tournament took place from Feb. 12-20 of this year, and, as the name suggests, had four nations competing.
The nations present were the USA, Canada, Finland and Sweden. The teams played three games in a round-robin format, then had a single championship game. Feb. 12 saw the first game with Canada beating Sweden 4-3 with overtime in the game. The following day the United States was up against Finland and won 6-1. Even I who know nothing about hockey know that this is a slightly embarrassing defeat for Finland.
On Saturday, Feb. 15, Finland made a comeback and beat Sweden 4-3, while the United States won against Canada 3-1. After a final round of all four nations, with Canada versus Finland and Sweden versus the United States, the final championship game was set to take place Thursday, Feb. 20, and fans were not disappointed.
While the Four-Nations was set to bring more awareness to the sport and to celebrate different nations of hockey fans, the final game for the championship was off to a very rocky start and full of behavior that made diplomats blush. During the singing of the United States’ national anthem, our typically kind and friendly neighbors to the north filled the arena with boos and drowned out those singing, making it impossible to hear the beloved “Star Spangled Banner.”
Oh Canada, what a mistake this was! Within nine seconds of the start of the game, the Americans and Canadians had three separate fights start three separate times. While hockey is famous for its showdowns, this is definitely a record and will go down in the history books.
Once referees had the bins full of angry players and the game actually got started, the United States players were determined to get revenge. While Canada won 3-2, the game was taken into overtime and had a hectic and unforgettable start.
Some are speculating that the Canadian fan began “booing” the United States’ national anthem because of president Trump’s taking office again. Whether this is the reason or not, it is not the most courteous of reactions to the national anthem of the country who is hosting the event. The goal of the Four-Nations face off was to have a friendly game, bringing nations together in a time of high tension and anxiety.
Now you can have any opinion you want on the president, the country or the players, but if you mess with the United States, you’ll pay the price. We may not have won but we tried our darndest, we fought on into overtime, but history repeated itself and the United States failed to take down Canada. Next year Canada!