Faceoffs and power plays aren’t just hockey terms — they’re the language of international diplomacy.

This week Russian President Vladimir Putin revived the Cold War tradition of taking geopolitics onto the ice, suggesting in a call to President Donald Trump that American and Russian skaters play matches against each other.

While the challenge is yet to be accepted, it’s an  idea with deep  roots in the Soviet era when hockey became a proxy arena in which to address geopolitical…