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The uneasy relations between Denmark and the United States will manifest in, of all places, a hockey game on Saturday night. Piero Cruciatti / AFP via Getty Images
MILAN — When Frans Nielsen was in seventh grade, his entire class went on an overnight field trip.
To Greenland.
“We never thought about Greenland not being Denmark,” said Nielsen, a Denmark native and veteran of 925 NHL games.
Greenland has been a part of the Kingdom of Denmark since the 1950s, but it’s a relationship few in the United States likely even knew about, let alone thought about. Since President Trump made acquiring Greenland a central part of his foreign policy goals, however, the island of about 56,000 people and the small Scandinavian country of about 6 million has found itself thrust into the international spotlight.
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“We’re just a small country,” Nielsen said with a laugh. “No one ever mentioned Denmark in the world picture. It’s weird to be in the news.”
The uneasy relations between Denmark and the United States will manifest in, of all places, a hockey game on Saturday night. The two nations will meet in the group stage of the men’s hockey tournament of the Milan Olympics. In any other year, the game wouldn’t warrant much attention. The United States is a hockey behemoth, a co-favorite with Canada for the gold medal, loaded with National Hockey League stars, while Denmark is a relative hockey neophyte, the lowest-ranked team among the 12 in the tournament aside from Italy, which qualified only because it’s the host.
It’s reminiscent of the NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off last February, a tournament that pitted the best American, Canadian, Swedish and Finnish players against each other in Montreal and Boston. The tournament was held amid Trump’s saber-rattling about absorbing Canada as “the 51st state.” Canadians were enraged by the constant posts and comments from Trump, because as they saw it, he was either belittling their country or threatening its sovereignty — or both. It led to raucous boos of the U.S. anthem before the game in Montreal, and produced one of the most heated and theatrical hockey games since the Miracle on Ice in 1980, when the United States beat the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.
Thomas Kristensen, a television presenter for Denmark’s TV2 who is in Milan covering the Olympics, doesn’t expect a similarly confrontational atmosphere at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena on Saturday night. Kristensen said the relationship between Greenland and Denmark is “very close,” adding that there’s been “a lot of emotions” back home,” but that Danish fans know better than to conflate American athletes with the American government.
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“You will not see anything from any Danish spectator going specifically at the American players, in no way,” Kristensen said. “The Danish people know that this is sport, and (not) the battle about Greenland.”
That ability to separate sports and politics has extended to the Danish players, who have been dutifully doling out no-comments since arriving in Milan last week. But on the eve of the game against the U.S., Ottawa Senators veteran Lars Eller acknowledged that the topic has crept into discussions with family and friends — and even among the team.
“It has come up a lot,” he said. “People ask, ‘Is it the same message over there in the U.S. as it is in Denmark? What is going on, what are they saying, how do they view things?’ But I think you can have a good conversation and dialogue, reasonable, with most people. At least, I have. Anyway, it seems to have settled down here the last little bit.”
Eller called it all “outside noise,” a common catch-all in athletic parlance.
“We’re not used to being in the news that much,” Eller said with a laugh. “I feel like every week, there’s something new, and whatever was in the news last week is forgotten quickly and we move on. I don’t think it’s on our minds, what’s going on politically in the world.”
The Danish minister of culture, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, is in Milan and watched Denmark’s loss to Germany on Thursday night. He’s been talking to players, Kristensen said, but not about the U.S.-Greenland kerfuffle.
Back home, though, it remains a hot topic.
“Of course, they’re talking about it,” Kristensen said. “It’s been going on now for such a long time that it seems to be quite normal that this is going on and on and on. Now, they’re going to play a game on the real ice — not on the ice of Greenland. So, of course, it’s special.”
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While the fate of Greenland is in some degree of doubt, the fate of Saturday’s game isn’t. The United States roster is laden with NHL superstars such as Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel, Matthew and Brady Tkachuk, and Quinn and Jack Hughes. Denmark has a few solid NHLers on its roster, including Nikolaj Ehlers, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Frederik Andersen and Eller, but it would take a monumental upset — again, think the Miracle on Ice, only bigger — to knock off the Americans.
“It’ll be a tough challenge,” Danish captain Nicklas Jensen said. “But I think it’s super cool anytime you get a chance to play against a team and individuals like the States have. It’s going to be a very tough matchup for us. Everything’s got to go pretty much perfect for us, and probably have everything not go perfect for them.”
One hockey game will not decide Greenland’s fate, of course. But the elevation of a lopsided, low-stakes group-stage matchup to one of global geopolitical fascination is the latest twist in what has become a bewildering story for a country that’s not used to such attention.
“The first couple of days, when the story started, we would say, ‘Is this a practical joke or what?’” Kristensen said with a laugh. “But when we saw the face of the U.S. president, we could see that he meant it seriously.”
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Mark Lazerus is a senior NHL writer for The Athletic based out of Chicago. He has covered the Blackhawks and the league at large for 13 seasons for The Athletic and the Chicago Sun-Times. He has been named one of the top three columnists in the country twice in the past three years by the Associated Press Sports Editors. Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkLazerus
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