‘Maybe they wanted to get a glimpse of what a Stanley Cup winning hockey team actually looks like’
Political tensions from the nascent Canada-U.S. trade war have spilled over into the hockey world again.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis joined the fray with a comment about Canadian tourism to the state and included a chirp about the 31-year Stanley Cup drought haunting Canada’s seven NHL teams.
During an address to lawmakers at the state capitol in Tallahassee, the governor briefly mentioned Florida’s tourist numbers from 2024, boasting 142 million visitors, 3.3 million of whom hailed from Canada, he noted.
“That’s not much of a boycott in my book. Maybe they wanted to get a glimpse of what a Stanley Cup-winning hockey team actually looks like,” DeSantis said to applause.
Canada’s Stanley Cup drought is a mind-boggling mathematical outlier
It’s worth noting that the 2023-24 Panthers’ roster, not unlike most NHL clubs, predominantly consists of Canadians and players from Europe.
The teammates were opponents in this year’s politically-charged 4 Nations Face-Off final, which Canada won thanks to overtime heroics by Connor McDavid, regarded by most as the greatest player in the game today.
In a Truth Social post before that contest, Trump said he would call the team to wish them luck and he also invited “Governor Trudeau” to watch the game with him in Washington. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told briefing room reporters the president was looking “forward to the United States beating our soon-to-be 51st state.”
Later in the day, Vice-President JD Vance said he wanted Team USA, winners of the teams’ round-robin meeting, to “kick their a– again because you don’t boo the United States of America,” referencing Canadian fans lustily jeering during the Star Spangled Banner ahead of the first meeting in Montreal.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau never publicly responded to Trump’s invite, but celebrated Team Canada’s win with a post on X that read: “You can’t take our country — and you can’t take our game.”
American teams may win more Cups, but Canada still rules the international ice when they meet head to head.
Team Canada holds a 14-4-1 record against Team USA, including notable gold medal wins at the 2002 and 2010 Winter Olympics.
Hockey USA’s last big best-on-best win over Canada was almost three decades ago in the 1996 Canada Cup final.
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