Chris Selley: Revoking the Stanley Cup from the NHL is a trade-war bargaining chip worth trying - National Post

Instead of judging each other’s travel and consumer preferences during our dispute with the U.S., let’s just take back the Stanley Cup, Chris Selley suggests. Photo by Jaylynn Nash/Getty ImagesArticle contentThe U.S.-Canada kerfuffle took an interesting tangent this week when the Buffalo Bills announced the Barenaked Ladies would sing the Canadian national anthem on Sept. 17 at the Bills’ new and lavishly taxpayer-funded US$2.1-billion stadium. (Even that kind of money doesn’t even get you a roof, nowadays!) Everyone seemed to treat it as a good news story, which it was. Just like it was a good news story when Buffalo Sabres fans belted out O Canada when the anthem singer’s mic cut out at a game in April. (The Sabres play both anthems before all home games.)

This is the sort of relationship Canadians and Americans had, still have and, should sanity prevail, will have more of and better in the future. We can’t quit each other, in the long term, and we shouldn’t want to.

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The anthems are also good business, naturally. By some estimates, roughly 15 per cent of Bills’ and Sabres’ season-ticket holders commute from Canada. But fewer Canadians crossed Niagara River bridges in June 2026 than in any non-pandemic June this century. That’s leaving a mark on the Buffalo economy. There’s no doubt travel is one of the few levers Canada has to deploy, even if certain jurisdictions — Buffalo, for example, where three-quarters of voters went for Kamala Harris in 2024 — don’t make much sense as strategic targets.

So, hang on … should Canadians be travelling to Bills games at all? For that matter, should the Barenaked Ladies be playing for billionaire Bills (and Sabres) owner Terry Pegula, a Republican fracking tycoon? Canadian artists who’ve cancelled U.S. tours “because of Trump” have gotten good press. And Canadians love to judge each other’s civic spirit.

You mustn’t travel to the U.S., even if it’s for “a reunion with your dearest friend,” a Globe and Mail columnist informed us last year. “Canadians should not visit the U.S. unless necessary. I am not going again unless I have to for work,” a Toronto Star sports columnist wrote on X … as if “work trumps friends and family” is a concept we must all accept. Back in the Globe, Labour Day having come and gone, snowbirds were enjoined this week: “By all means, venture abroad … But for the love of country, stand in solidarity with your Canadian kin and skip the States for your leisure travel.”