Canada, U.S. men renew hockey hostilities

BEIJING — Jordan Weal was down on the ice, blood dripping from his face.

The Canadian winger returned to the fray, relieving some frustration by breaking his stick over an American shin pad. Neither sequence resulted in a penalty — because there weren’t any referees.

“Would have liked for us to get a power play,” joked Weal, who last suited up in the NHL with Montreal in 2019-20.

Desperate for a game ahead of the men’s Olympic hockey tournament, Canada and the United States held a controlled scrimmage earlier this week.

Players on both sides mostly kept their collective cool, but Canadian coach Jeremy Colliton wondered aloud what might have happened had the exercise continued much longer.

“The game probably ended at the right time,” he said.

There will be a lot more on the line, and plenty more emotion, when the countries meet again Saturday afternoon — tonight back home — for Group A bragging rights in Beijing.

“We have an idea what’s coming,” Colliton said Thursday after Canada beat Germany 5-1 to open another Olympic tournament minus NHLers. “It’s gonna be a challenge. They’re are fast team, they’re a skilled team.”

The U.S. also kicked off its gold-medal quest in convincing fashion with an 8-0 thumping of China.

“It’s gonna be competitive, no question,” Canadian captain Eric Staal said. “It’ll be a little different than the scrimmage, but you get a little taste of what they are. We’ll talk about what we can do to try and exploit some of the things against them.”

“It actually gave us an idea what we’re good at,” U.S. head coach David Quinn said. “And what we weren’t good at.”

Canada will have head coach Claude Julien back behind the bench after the 61-year-old, who broke his ribs in a fall during the team’s training camp in Switzerland and was initially unable to travel to China, rejoined the team following the game against Germany.