Milan
—
Outside the arena here, it felt like all of Canada had arrived, not so much for a hockey game but for a statement.
This, this sport played on ice, belongs to us. You Americans may keep your football; we get hockey.
And so, they sipped their beer, using cans and sippy cups and bottles, and chugged their Canadian whiskey and wore their red and took over Milan, spilling into seats with their maple leaf flags hanging and lofted into the air.
Amid simmering tensions between the United States and its usually cordial neighbors to the north, a hockey game had taken on all sorts of subtext and meaning. But at its core, it was about hockey. About…