Only Game Eight of the 1972 Summit Series can match the explosive political and sports combination of Feb. 16, 2025.  Guesses are now being accepted over just what Canada and Canada’s hockey team’s program might look like by the end of the 2020s. Once certainty— if the game Saturday is any indication fraternal friendship between the U.S. and Canada will be on hold for a while.

When props first began to catch the public interest, they were a novelty. Snobs saw them as sucker bets for squares. In Vegas, books would stage a glitzy launch ten days before the game to announce their props. No more. The first props for SB LIX were out minutes after the conference final games were decided. The brushfire is now a conflagration.

The fate of hockey stars may be only a small piece of any future U.S. trade deals. But they will be very visible to Canada’s hockey fans. Not being able to satisfy them is a political price no politician wants to face. But given the current intransigence by Justin Trudeau scrambling to stay in office it is far from improbable.

Society is in the eye of the trans contagion right now, so most people can't see the damage being done, says Mia Hughes of the MacDonald Laurier Institute. But soon, all the young people emerging from this contagion sterile and missing body parts will be visible for all to see, and people will be horrified that they supported such evil.

Play this drinking game. Every time some football analyst on TV says during the course of a game, “He’ll be a star for this team for years” take a drink. You’ll be tipsy in a hurry. The concept of the players you’re loving now lasting very long with NFL, NHL, NBA or even MLB teams has come and gone.

What might be of interest to Canadians is that people in the development system of American hockey are similarly distressed about the problems of developing players in their country. Cost, bureaucracy and the sheer time commitment for families is breaking a lot of people. The culture of big-money development has taken hold with a vengeance.

Watching the grim progress of DEI social engineering in commercials has been a wake-up call to the public. The disgust with mass indoctrination via the marketplace is one of the factors that propelled Trump back to the White House and has led to Justin Trudeau’s engineered exit from the PMO. Governments led by Trump and Pierre Poilievre will be expected to reverse the DEI folly.

For Canadian fans on holiday, unsettled by Donald Trump jibes about making them the 51st state, the Latvia loss portends something deeper and darker. Canada has owned the tournament for much of its being, winning five golds in the past decade. But now the U.S. is suddenly king-in-waiting, winners three times in that decade, including last year. It’s gut-check time.

Consumers cutting the cable wanted to punish cable/ satellite providers. So they made the change. Then a funny thing happened. It was now only some of what you wanted. The expansion of multiple carriers pissed off viewers just as much as the arbitrary cable companies. the magic solution of cable cutting is now the tragic solution.

MLB has no trouble with the financial big boys in New York, Los Angles, Texas, Toronto, Atlanta and Chicago shelling out money no small market dare pay. In the MLB cheap seats, Tampa, Pittsburgh  and Miami can’t send out quality players fast enough. But MLB is cool with that too as those paupers get a healthy slice of TV money.

Where it was rare for QBs to gain more than a few years running it’s now common to see six or seven QBs in the Top 50 rushers in the NFL. Currently six QBs are in the Top 50. But where the competition have been race cars, Josh Allen has been a snow plow, going through, not around, defenders. 

Ask yourself, at what other position in what other league would the three best players at a vital position be allowed to switch team from 2023-24?. That’s what happened last winter when top candidates for 2024 OPOY— Barkley, Jacobs and Derrick Henry— all departed their former teams for slightly better paydays on the Eagles, Packers and Ravens. Doesn’t seem to make sense.

Damn that Tom Brady. Because of the now-retired NFL GOAT it is widely believed that an athlete in his 40s can still triumph over younger men. That a good diet, plenty of sleep and keen desire can sustain you against twenty-two year olds. It ain’t so.

Over the decades we’ve spoken with many parents and players trying to parse this CHL/ NCAA equation. It was a heartbreaking scene when they gambled on a CHL career that gave them no life skills or permanent physical problems. Or the promised NCAA golden goose never appeared after playing in a lower league for prime development years. 

It’s safe to say that as Canada prepares to defenestrate Justin Trudeau in the next federal election, Wayne Gretzky will not be invited to Rideau Hall for beaver tails with the PM. It’s likely he’ll experience the Bobby Orr blackout, becoming a non-person in Canada for getting too close to Trump.

So is Nick Bosa acting like a college sophomore to express a voting preference compare to Kaepernick wanting a race-based social revolution in America? Mmm. These things are not like the other. It’s like accusing Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce of political interference for appearing with his girlfriend Taylor Swift, a vocal Kamala Harris supporter.

It’s eariy. But not so early that several NHL coaches are not feeling the heat already. We can expect that heads will soon roll if certain teams don’t find their mojo. It’s a sad but predictable result of a salary cap league where the most disposable item is a coach.

Fans and contemporary media still think they we are living in a time when every club, given a little luck and nan good draft, will reward its fans with a champions parade. That’s what the mania for parity and salary caps was about. But it doesn’t work that way any longer.

All of which begs the question: If so many of those affected by this supposed insult don’t see it as an insult… then who is the progressive culture industry doing it for?  I’ll take your answer off-air.

Was he guilty? Hell, yes. Did he perpetuate lame excuses and construct a grubby martyr narrative? Sure did. Had he alienated just about everyone who could get him to Cooperstown? Oh yeah. A recent HBO documentary series on him is an accurate portrait of a rude, uncouth character still worshipped by sycophants. But whose record as a player is impeccable.