Player brawls during the 4 Nations Canada-U.S. match show there is worth to being the bad guy

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After Saturday night’s spinoff of the War of 1812, everybody rushed downstairs to figure out who’d fired the first shots. It was America’s Matthew Tkachuk in the first instance.

“He just told me we were going and I wasn’t saying, ‘No’,” said his Canadian co-combatant, Brandon Hagel.

Then it was Tkachuk’s brother Brady in the second.

“After Matthew went, Brady came over to me and, yeah …,” said Canada’s Sam Bennett.

Fight No. 3 was a fun, spur-of-the-moment thing. Though in that one, the guy who started it – J.T. Miller – looked like he was reconsidering his work style once Canada’s Colton Parayko began shaking him like a bottle of ketchup.

Once it ended, the Canadians had reverted to Canadianness. None of them had anything provocative to say about the encounters. They all seemed embarrassed to be asked about it.

Mostly, they just wanted to repeat what they had been told to say about Monday’s encounter with Finland being “a Game 7.” They all said that.

The Canadians wanted to leave town as quickly as possible, but not the Tkachuks.

“The building was shaking after the third one,” Matthew said afterward, practically vibrating with delight, while Brady sat beside him nodding. “I’m excited to watch them.”

These guys aren’t doing strictly hockey. It’s hockey with a strong undertone of professional wrestling.

Thank God for the two of them. There’s not much point in having a non-shooting border war if no one is willing to be mean to anyone else. This piece needs villains. The Tkachuk brothers provide that.

A fear of wickedness is a critical Canadian weakness. We’re not just talking about hockey – no one in this country wants to be the bad guy. Everybody wants to be the voice of reason.

(This is not to say that everyone is reasonable, only that they would all like to be seen that way.)

It’s a workable approach, until you’re up against unreasonable people. Then it immediately seizes up and starts emitting smoke.

Photos from Saturday night of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sitting in the stands with his Team Canada sweater on seemed pulled from some previous era. One where the leaders of friendly nations gamble clichéd national products – a bottle of maple syrup, maybe, or a case of 50 – on the outcome.

Trudeau was up there, still living in 2015, waiting to be gently ribbed by his international counterpart about the loss afterward. Maybe they might zing each other back and forth on Twitter, as it used to be called.

Meanwhile, the fight isn’t friendly any more. It’s an actual fight. They don’t want our symbolic maple syrup. If there’s any money to be made in the maple-syrup business, the U.S. would like half of it. That’s just for starters.

Under those circumstances, we need baddies of our own. People whose first instinct isn’t to say, “Let’s all try to calm down.” Sometimes you need to anger up. If only to let the other guy know you will not be run over.

Obviously, this is a baby-steps process. Sport is a decent place to start that reappraisal. So far, so okay. Not great. But all right for a first try.

If this was happening in a lot of other countries in the world – most of them, really – we’d already be at the angry words/screaming coaches/multiple suspensions stage.

If it was happening at a big tournament – because the NHL are such saps, the 4 Nations is the best we’ve got at the moment – we’d be well into an international incident. Maybe even ‘The Soccer War’ territory.

Typically, the participants run ahead of their audience in terms of hotness. Not here. The fans in Montreal were ready for combat from the off.

Watching them boo American MC Michelle Kwan – a winsome figure skater who I’m pretty sure has never heard a cruel word in public her whole life – said something about how far over the red line the typical Canadian fan has wandered.

The Canadian players had to be goaded to action, though they all rose. Not so long ago, many might not have out of fear they’d take a penalty that would cost the team down the line. Give them credit for understanding that the score line was not the main thing on Saturday night. Being seen to stand up for yourself was.

Still, the Canadian audience appears to have adapted better to our new reality. The hockey team is still living with the prime minister in the Obama presidency.

I get it – most of these guys have to go back to the United States and make a living. Everything they say here can and will be dredged up by some hockey TikToker and used against them. Then they’ll have to explain themselves, which hockey players hate.

But Brady Tkachuk has to go back to Ottawa. He doesn’t seem worried that someone’s going to say something that’s not nice to him in the vegetable aisle at Loblaws.

That man is living in a national moment. He understands what the people who support him want. We insulted his country (after his country insulted ours far more grievously) and he reacted.

Canada needs a lot of things right now. It needs leadership. It needs steel. It needs to come together in action, rather than in speeches. It needs to cultivate a mean streak. Hopefully, we won’t have to use it, but like Al Capone said about kind words, they work better if you’re also carrying a weapon.

We need more Tkachuks. They aren’t deranged. They haven’t said anything wild or unforgivable. They seem like they’re having fun being naughty. They’re up for it when the situation calls for a little bit of the old aggro, and aren’t afraid who it upsets.

Yesterday was the time for Canada to be solely focused on solving problems. Before we can get back to that, today it’s time to cause a few.