Canada takes the 4 Nations Face-Off by force

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The booing of the Canadians began around 7:30 p.m. ET, about an hour before puck drop.

That’s when the TD Garden’s in-arena camera started picking out pockets of fandom. This is typical pre-game stuff. What struck you as different was the reaction.

Once they realized they were the ones being jeered, the Canadians on the screen turned straight into the camera and began hulking out or yelling back. In one case, an entire multigenerational family in red and black rose to protest, including a shrieking grandma. Even on tour, Canada is as mad as hell and is not going to take it anymore.

Then Team Canada remade that point for nearly three hours of remarkable hockey. They hung a 3-2 overtime loss on the United States, and possibly kicked off the U.S. President Donald Trump sports curse. The hero of this latest unlikely hockey triumph was winning goal scorer Connor McDavid. A close runner-up was goalie Jordan Binnington, who transformed into Ken Dryden for the extra period.

A lot of what happened at TD Garden wasn’t hockey. It was politics, and in the von Clausewitz sense - war by other means.

Except the Boston crowd wasn’t all that interested in punching back. The booing of ‘O Canada’? Cursory. Perfunctory, even.

The audience let the Canadians on hand - and there were many of them - take up the song in its second half.

Boston is a lot of things. It’s a hockey town, a ‘U-S-A-U-S-A’ town and an occasional slew-foot town, but it’s not a Trump town. In their low-key, charming way, they seemed to be protesting, too.

Each team was missing so much defensive talent through injury that you half-hoped it might turn into a wide-open, classic Canada Cup-type encounter. But too much had been said in the lead-up. Both sides were too determined not to lose it early.

Canada scored first through Nathan MacKinnon - a frisbee shot from the point that wobbled through Connor Hellebuyck. The U.S.A. evened through Brady Tkachuk crashing the net to collect an Auston Matthews pass.

One-one after one seemed a fair place to end it.

Midway through the second, the score hadn’t changed and the energy began to lag. That’s the Tkachuk Bat Signal. Ottawa’s Brady began trying to fight anyone in red who would have him. He was so scattershot that he couldn’t settle on a target, though several were willing.

All of a sudden coming together at the end of a play began to threaten violence. That woke the crowd and their team up.

Matthews was at it again, creating confusion in front of the Canadian net. The Leafs' captain had been having a fairly miserable tournament. Had - past tense. To that point in the evening, he was the most dangerous player on either side of the ice.

The puck bounced out to Jake Sanderson, who gave the Americans their first lead.

This is where the Canada that lives in our imaginations becomes Canada. In the lead-up to the game, you could see that belief slowly overcome all the hockey lifers here to cover the game. They thought the U.S. would win. Until about an hour before the game started, then they all just knew that Canada would instead. Because.

Sam Bennett tied it for Canada with a hustle steal at centre ice, which he followed up by scoring on the give-and-go. It was at that point, with less than a half hour of game time remaining, that the contest started in earnest.

The third was a period of near misses. Pucks pachinko’ing in on goal and hitting posts. Floating through creases unseen. Arching over cross bars. Everybody was giving as well taking.

By the end, neither team wanted to take any chances. Canada almost found the net in the final seconds on a scramble, and you felt then they would rue their chances. But as has so often happened in this country, the puck luck finds us when it matters.

The 4 Nations Face-Off was a contrived tournament that will never be played again. But now that it’s over, we’re in a whole new hockey world. It’s one where only two teams matter, though others will be allowed to participate.

It’s not a friendly encounter anymore. It’s friendly enough, and occasionally very unfriendly. That will depend on the politics of the moment.

In a break with protocol, President Trump called the American team before the game had started on Thursday. Talk about confidence.

What did he say?

“Told some stories about golf,” said defenceman Zach Werenski. “Half the call wasn’t even about hockey, it was just him talking.”

That scans.

The NHL wanted to do this to make a few bucks and, God willing, win a few converts. Through no fault of their own, they succeeded wildly. Even the bookies were excited. According to reports, they were doing as much as six times more action than NHL games. And this is without the Leafs for people to lose the rent payment on.

For Americans, it’s a realization that while baseball and basketball won’t give them that Don’t Tread on Me feel they crave, hockey can. Especially if any member of the Tkachuk family is on hand.

For Canadians, it’s a reminder that we can be galvanized in many ways, but the simplest is to slip a Maple Leaf jersey on a few guys and set them loose. The rest of the country knows what to do.

We call it our game, and it still is. Nobody cares about it as much. But that doesn’t mean we own it. If we want precedence, we’re going to have to take it back by force. It’s no moon mission, but it’s not the worst national goal.

The men’s ice hockey tournament at the Milan Olympics begins in 355 days, as of Friday. Set an alarm.