Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau basked in the geopolitical thrill of victory Thursday night, celebrating Canada’s 3-2 overtime win over team USA in the 4 Nations Face-Off final with a jab at President Donald Trump.

“You can’t take our country — and you can’t take our game,” Trudeau posted to X late Thursday night, a retort to mudslinging from Trump, who has repeatedly referred to Canada as America’s the 51st state and gave team USA a pregame pep talk on Thursday.

While players and fans alike outside the stadium were hesitant to discuss the geopolitical tensions between the neighboring countries, to Trump and Trudeau the game clearly carried meaning beyond the ice.

“I’ll be calling our GREAT American Hockey Team this morning to spur them on towards victory tonight against Canada, which with FAR LOWER TAXES AND MUCH STRONGER SECURITY, will someday, maybe soon, become our cherished, and very important, Fifty First State,” Trump posted to social media on Thursday.

The Canadians kicked off the scoring with a shot by Nathan Mackinnon that somehow found its way past American goalie Connor Hellebuyck. But two Americans who both play for Ottawa’s NHL team — Brady Tkachuk and Jake Sanderson — scored to give the U.S. a 2-1 lead midway through the game.

Canada squared things up less than ten minutes after the Americans took their lone lead of the game. And things stayed that way until overtime. That’s when Connor McDavid, widely regarded as the NHL’s best player, found himself free in front of the net and swiped the winner past Hellebuyck.

Though the on-ice rivalry between the U.S. and Canada is decades old, it took on renewed potency this year amid Trump’s repeated and ongoing provocations targeting his nation’s northern neighbor. When the two teams faced off in Montreal last weekend, there were three fights in the first 9 seconds of the game, and Canadian fans booed the American national anthem. The Americans won that game 3-1.

There was a smattering of boos and chants of “USA” in Boston on Thursday at the start of the Canadian anthem, “O Canada,” but they were quickly drowned out by cheers in the packed arena.

Beyond talk of annexing Canada, the president has also promised to inflict the longtime ally with 25 percent across-the-board tariffs, which are on hold for a month after Canada promised to address Trump’s concerns about fentanyl flowing into the U.S. from the north. The tariffs would be particularly damaging to Quebec, which provides 60 percent of America’s aluminum.

Before Thursday’s game, Vice President JD Vance joked at CPAC that “to Canada, if you guys don’t win, the tariffs are even higher.”

For now, Canada’s hockey team can credit themselves for keeping those tariffs as is.

Gregory Svirnovskiy contributed to this report.