Matthew Tkachuk responds to Brandon Hagel’s comments and you can tell this will impact tomorrow’s game. Watch below:

The United States beat Canada by a score of 3-1 on Saturday night in Montreal after three fights broke out in the first nine seconds of play. The two teams will meet again in the championship game of the 4 Nations Face-Off tomorrow night in Boston.

After the loss to Team USA, Canadian players found out that forward Matthew Tkachuk said that younger brother Brady and teammate J.T. Miller formed a group chat to plan how to “send a message” to Canada. In the first seconds of the game, Matthew Tkachuk and Canadian counterpart Brandon Hagel fought two seconds into the first period. Canadian forward Sam Bennett and Brady Tkachuk of the U.S. then dropped the gloves one second later. And after playing the actual game for six seconds, U.S. winger J.T. Miller fought defenseman Colton Parayko.

This prompted Team Canada’s Hagel to say that Canada has no group chats or anything to plan what they’re going to do when facing the Americans. He added that he’s playing for the Canadian flag and not to make good television.

“I think we’re out there playing for the flag, not the cameras,” Hagel said. “We don’t need to initiate anything. We don’t have any group chats going on. We’re going out there playing our game and then giving it everything and doing it for our country. We don’t need to initiate everything. We’re just going to play as hard as we can and do it for the flag on the chest.”

On Wednesday, Matthew Tkachuk had an answer for Hagel, taking a shot at Team Canada ahead of their final showdown:

“Well, I mean maybe their team doesn’t like each other if they don’t have group chats.”

“I think that’s just a player enjoying his opportunity,” Tkachuk added. “I think that our team does not care about anything that they say, and there’s been a lot of chatter and talk from individuals, but we care about one thing in this room and we have millions of people that are watching us and supporting us around this country and we’re very prideful in playing for them and the guys in the room. It’s an opportunity of a lifetime for us.”

Meanwhile, during his press conference, Canada’s forward Brad Marchand had good words for Tkachuk’s Team USA, saying that it is “the best team I’ve ever played against.”

“They don’t have any weaknesses.”

So much already into this championship game.

Will the Canada vs. USA sequel live up to the hype?