Hockey is dead. Long live the algorithm.

Last night, Canada dismantled Czechia 5-0 in a performance that felt less like a sporting event and more like a high-end server farm performing a routine stress test on a legacy machine. It wasn’t a game; it was a data dump. Five goals. Zero answers. A total system failure for the visitors.

If you were looking for the "magic of sport," you probably missed it between the glitching digital board advertisements and the soul-crushing efficiency of a Canadian roster that looks like it was assembled by a venture capital firm with an unlimited burn rate.

Here are the three things we learned while staring into the flickering LED void.

1. The Death of the Underdog Narrative

We love a David and Goliath story. It’s the original clickbait. But in the modern era of high-performance sports science, David doesn't have a sling; he has a sub-optimal training budget and a coaching staff that hasn't upgraded its software since 2012.

Canada’s 5-0 win was a brutal reminder that money buys outcomes. We aren't just talking about the $100 million-plus in infrastructure and scouting. We're talking about the friction of the "talent monopoly." When one nation hoards the top 0.1% of biological processing power, the "game" becomes a foregone conclusion. The Czechs weren't outplayed; they were out-computed. They looked like a flip phone trying to run a 4K video stream. It’s hard to get excited about the "spirit of the game" when the result is baked into the hardware before the puck even drops.

The scoreline wasn't an anomaly. It was a predictable output from a superior operating system.

2. The Great Digital Eye-Sore

If you watched the game on a screen—which, let’s be honest, is the only way anyone consumes anything now—you probably noticed the boards. Or rather, you noticed the seizure-inducing digital overlays that replaced the boards.

This is the specific friction of modern viewership: you pay a $19.99 monthly subscription fee to a streaming service that barely functions, only to have your retinas scorched by a fluctuating CGI ad for a crypto exchange or a pickup truck. During a particularly fast break in the second period, the Canadian winger literally disappeared into a digital overlay for a split second. He became a ghost in the machine, a temporary victim of a rendering error.

We’ve reached the point where the actual human beings on the ice are secondary to the ad space surrounding them. We’re watching a three-hour commercial interrupted by occasional bursts of physical violence. The trade-off for "free" content used to be our attention. Now, we pay for the privilege of having our attention auctioned off to the highest bidder in real-time. It makes the 5-0 victory feel clinical, sanitized, and deeply boring.

3. The Efficiency Trap

Canada is too good. That sounds like a humble-brag, but it’s actually a product defect.

When a team becomes this optimized, they lose the ability to surprise. Every pass was crisp. Every rotation was mathematically sound. The power play moved with the cold, unfeeling logic of an automated high-frequency trading bot. It’s impressive for about ten minutes. After that, you start checking your phone.

The Czechs, bless their hearts, tried to introduce some chaos. They threw hits. They tried "creative" clearing attempts. But Canada just absorbed the noise and converted it back into possession. This is the ultimate goal of modern sports tech: the elimination of risk. But risk is the only reason we watch. If I wanted to see a perfectly executed, risk-free operation, I’d watch a robotic arm assemble an iPhone.

By the third period, the arena felt like a giant waiting room. The outcome was settled, the data was logged, and the only thing left to do was wait for the clock to hit zero so everyone could go home and check their notifications.

Canada didn’t just beat Czechia. They solved them. And once a puzzle is solved, there’s no reason to look at it anymore.

We’re heading toward a future where sports are just another branch of the tech industry, measured in KPIs and optimized for maximum monetization with minimum variance. It’s a clean, profitable, and entirely hollow experience.

Who actually wins when the game is this lopsided? The fans? The sponsors? Or just the people who own the patents on the training tech?

At least the jerseys looked good in high definition. Or maybe that was just the filters.