Are Americans biggest hockey rival for Canada?
It is now a question with an answer: Have the Americans supplanted the Russians as Canada’s No. 1 hockey rival? After Tuesday’s soaring performance by teenagers from both sides of the 49th parallel, I think the answer is, if not black and white, coloured red, white and blue, at least for a new generation of Canadian hockey fans. For that generation, the magnificent struggles with first the Soviets and then the Russians, buffed and polished to a legendary glow by us old-timers, exist for them only in boxed DVD sets and clips on YouTube. Paul Henderson, Foster Hewitt, helmetless players, wooden sticks and tube skates are, oh, so 1970s, huh? Certainly, for those of us of a certain age, the U.S.S.R.-Canada Summit Series of 1972 will always be the “where were you when…?” generational sports touchstone. Back then, hockey games between the two countries transcended hockey and became pitched battles on a Cold War landscape. But it’s already going on 23 years — almost a generation — since “
