Hockey fans in Buffalo stepped in and sang the Canadian national anthem before Tuesday night’s Game 5 of the Sabres’ first-round Stanley Cup playoff series after the singer’s microphone cut out.
Cami Clune, a former The Voice finalist from Buffalo, appeared to have some technical issues as she began to sing O Canada ahead of the game.
As her microphone cut out, the crowd came together at KeyBank Center in Buffalo, N.Y., to sing along and help her out.
“Well that was interesting!!” Clune wrote on Threads afterward. “Thank you all for singing along with me. We have the best fans ever!”
In another post on X, Clune wrote, “What a night. Truly grateful for this city. Buffalo always shows up. On to Game 6, let’s go!!”
Fans in the crowd shared video of the moment to social media.
David Alter, a reporter for the Hockey News, took to X and wrote, “Amazing scene as the mic cuts out as the Sabres crowd sings Oh Canada in the anthem singer’s place.”
Matthew Bové, sports director at WKBW, also shared a video on X, writing, “Well this is pretty cool. Anthem singer’s mic stopped working and the fans just perfectly sang O Canada.”
Joe Thomas, whose band Mayday Buffalo also played at the game, spoke about the moment in a video shared to Threads.
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“Before the game we had a really cool moment with Cami Clune leading us all in a moment of kinship with our Canadian brethren,” he wrote in the caption.
At most arenas in the United States, O Canada is performed when the visiting team is Canadian but in Buffalo, the Canadian anthem is sung before each game, as it borders Ontario.
Clune received a new microphone before she sang The Star-Spangled Banner. The Buffalo Sabres lost the game to the Boston Bruins with a score of 2-1. The Sabres lead the series three games to two and the Bruins will host Game 6 in Boston on Friday.
In 2023, Canadian fans stepped in to help out their American counterparts during a microphone mishap.
Toronto Maple Leafs fans jumped in to sing The Star-Spangled Banner during a March 2023 game against the Buffalo Sabres at the Scotiabank Areana in Toronto and didn’t miss a beat when singer Natalie Morris’s microphone malfunctioned.
The moment at the Sabres-Bruins game comes after sports fans in arenas across Canada have occasionally booed loudly while the U.S. national anthem is played at NHL and NBA games in the past couple of years — even during a WWE Elimination Chamber event in Toronto last March — in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs imposed on the country and his comments about making Canada the “51st state.”
But it wasn’t just the Canadians protesting the U.S. national anthem. The Canadian national anthem was booed by fans at the 4 Nations Face-Off in February 2025, which came after the jeering of the U.S. national anthem during the opening rounds in Montreal the week prior.
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