I haven’t paid attention to hockey in a long time, but this year, after a league-record 15-season playoff drought, the National Hockey League team I root for, my hometown Buffalo Sabres, won their division and made the playoffs. So I’ve been watching some of the games.
Last week, in the first round of the playoffs, the Sabres were up three games to one against the Boston Bruins, playing at home, and ready to close out the best-of-seven series.
I was interested, but I wasn’t emotionally invested the way I am with the Bills. I’m a Sabres fan who jumped back onto the bandwagon within the past months when I realized they were finally good and were heading toward winning their division.
Still, I got emotional. It wasn’t because of anything that happened during the game, but what happened before the game, during the singing of the national anthems.
Buffalo is the only NHL team that plays both the Canadian and U.S. national anthems before home games, regardless of the opponent, a tradition related to its bordering Canada and the team having a strong Canadian fan base.
It was near the beginning of the Canadian anthem, which is sung first, that vocalist Cami Clune’s microphone failed. For a few seconds, there was silence, and then the 19,000 fans in the stands filled in with an A Capella rendition of “O Canada.” Buffalo fans know every word to the Canadian anthem. I know the words myself from attending many hockey games in my youth, and it’s not unheard of for me to break out in song with the Canadian national anthem on my lips, just because I can.
This was an emotional moment because of its contrast with what happened in February, when at the NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off tournament, fans jeered “The Star-Spangled Banner” before a Canada-U.S. game in Montreal, while “O Canada” was booed before a Canada-U.S. matchup in Boston.
Why the booing? You know why. It was due to the animosity fomented by the ineffective tariffs and brutish behavior of 47(86), who incessantly taunted Canada and said we were going to annex their country to be our fifty-first state.
Canadians are pissed at Americans, and I don’t blame them. I spend a lot of time in Canada during the summer, and last year I’d never seen more Canadian flags flying and patriotic signs and markets stocked with products clearly labeled as made in Canada. Their cross-border visits to Buffalo and other border cities are way down.
When the Buffalo fans stepped up to sing “O Canada,” it was both a middle finger to 47 and an olive branch to our Canadian neighbors: “See, we don’t all suck. Most of us still love you.”
Despite the huge boost the fans got from singing for our northern neighbors, Buffalo lost that game, 2-1. But they returned to Boston two nights later and closed out the Bruins to win the series 4-2. They’re now moving to the second round to play against the only Canadian team remaining in the Stanley Cup Playoffs: the aptly named Montreal Canadiens, spelled with an ‘e’ because the founders named the team “Les Canadiens,” a term identified at the time with French speakers, who were the majority in the province of Quebec.
Tune in to hear the lovely Canadian national anthem, the U.S. one too, and stay for what should be a competitive series between two of the league’s youngest and fastest teams.
