Brady Tkachuk Said There's "Hatred" For Canada. He's Also the Captain of a Canadian NHL Team.

Brady Tkachuk did not say he hates Canada. That is not what he said and TCL is not going to tell you it is. What he said, to ESPN's Emily Kaplan on the eve of the gold medal game, was this: "There's hatred there. I mean, they've been the top dog. They've been the best for the last bunch of years, and for us, we want to be in that position, be the best."

That quote has circulated widely over the past three days, mischaracterized in some corners of the internet as Tkachuk declaring personal animus toward Canada as a country. That reading is wrong, and repeating it would be cheap. What Tkachuk was describing, accurately, is competitive hatred. The specific, burning desire of a generation of American players to knock Canada off the top of international hockey. The same feeling Canadian players have had toward the Soviet Union, toward the Americans in 2010, toward whoever sits above them on the podium. It is not hatred of a country. It is the hatred of being second.

That said, the quote is worth sitting with, and not just because it turned out to be accurate bulletin board material that the Americans delivered on.

The Context That Makes It Awkward

Brady Tkachuk is the captain of the Ottawa Senators. He plays his home games in Canada's capital. His mother is Canadian. He has built his entire NHL career in a Canadian market, in a city that gave him his captaincy, that fills the building when he plays well, and that — for one brief awkward moment — watched its captain suit up against the country it lives in and describe the rivalry with a word that rhymes with "greatness" but means something else.

Ottawa fans noticed. "Does he realize he has to come back to our nation's capital when the Olympics are over?" was among the more printable reactions circulating online. The more pointed ones called for a trade. Some pointed out, not incorrectly, that his mother is Canadian, which adds a layer that Tkachuk himself has never addressed publicly.

None of this is unreasonable. Tkachuk said something honest and something sharp, and now he has to walk back into an NHL market where the people in the stands speak both official languages and overwhelmingly wanted Canada to win. It's just the reality he signed up for when he took the Senators' captaincy and the American jersey simultaneously.

What It Actually Reveals

The part of Tkachuk's comments that deserves more attention is the frustration underneath them. The U.S. men had not defeated Canada in a best-on-best competition since the 1996 World Cup of Hockey — a tournament that took place before most current American players were born. Thirty years of losses to the same opponent, at the same level, in the same format. That doesn't produce indifference. It produces exactly the word Tkachuk used.

Canada should not be surprised by this. We built that feeling in American dressing rooms by being better than them, repeatedly, for three decades. The 2010 gold. The 2014 gold. The 4 Nations final last year. Every one of those wins added another layer to what Tkachuk was describing on Saturday. You don't get to dominate a rivalry and then act shocked when the other side admits they desperately want to beat you.

"I mean, we were one shot away last year, and sometimes you got to go through that adversity, that sadness, those tough times for the good times to feel even better," Tkachuk said. "It was definitely a tough couple days, couple weeks, months after that game. And I know I don't want to feel like that ever again."

The Honest Canadian Take

Here's ours: Tkachuk's comments were competitive, not contemptuous. The outrage that he "hates Canada" is exaggerated and, in some cases, deliberately so. He described a rivalry the way rivals describe rivalries. He plays in our capital, he competes against our players, and he will be back on Canadian ice by Wednesday.

The more interesting question isn't whether Tkachuk hates Canada. It's whether Canada is prepared for a world where the Americans have now beaten us back-to-back in major international finals and whether the hatred, as Tkachuk calls it, is starting to tip into something more uncomfortable: American confidence.

That is a problem Canadian hockey has not had to manage in a long time.