Canadians are well-mannered even when they’re talking trash

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After an intense buildup to Sunday’s preliminary-round hockey finale between the U.S. and Canada and a huge home-country crowd packed into Canada Hockey Place on Sunday, it would have been easy for U.S. goalie Ryan Miller to feel like he was facing an entire nation.

Not so, he said after the U.S. prevailed, 5-3.

“We were playing against the boys in the red uniforms, but the crowd made it exciting. It was a fun environment,” he said.

When he was out in the city, walking around and seeing the sights with his family, he did get a taste of being treated like the enemy, he said. People would approach him and talk trash and make him feel outnumbered.

That sounded so unlikely for Canadians, the reporters clustered around him asked him what exactly people had said to him.

“They’d come up and say things like, ‘You’re the American goalie. Go Canada!’ ” he said.

That’s trash talk??

“They’re polite here,” he said. “They know the game and respect the game.”

-- Helene Elliott, reporting from Vancouver