NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off The Cure For All-Star Blues
Pro sports fans always say that they yearn for All-Star games where the best-on-best competition is real. In return, the leagues have typically given them farcical exhibitions where the participants perform at half speed.
Major League Baseball is the only sports league where the All-Star Game comes within a reasonable proximity of the actual games, though they can’t ask pitchers to extend themselves past a minimum count. The other three leagues are a joke—football has given up its Pro Bowl entirely, replacing it with carnival events.
As for the NBA and NHL, they keep tweaking their respective All-Star formats every odd year, only to watch the players jog into layup lines and glide into glorified shootout competitions. Putting comedian Kevin Hart ON THE COURT as an emcee will get the NBA players’ juices flowing this time. For sure.
I get it, it’s hard to find a way to get professional athletes in the midst of grueling seasons to give full effort and risk injury in an otherwise meaningless affair. The teams don’t want them to either. Everyone’s ecstatic to be there and pump their on-and-off court brands and hang out with their peers, but the games? Though they’re supposed to be a show for the fans, the players have the misconception that a 198-186 basketball final or a 9-7 pond hockey game passes for entertainment.
They don’t.
But every once in a while, the NHL interrupts its season to stage an event where the league’s top players compete for their countries. The Winter Olympic Games are typically the platform, but this being an off year, the league has contrived something called the 4 Nations Face-Off, where the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Finland will play each other in a round robin starting on Wednesday night. The two teams with the best record will meet in a Championship Game on February 20 in Boston.
Obviously, this isn’t an all-inclusive event, with Russia, a political pariah, the most notorious omission. However, you’ll be seeing a large chunk of the NHL’s elite, including six of the league’s top ten and nine of its top 15 point producers and three of the five winningest goalies (only because Canada strangely left Washington’s Logan Thompson off their roster).
Team USA will have a familiar local flavor, with the Rangers (defenseman Adam Fox, center Vincent Trocheck, and wing Chris Kreider), Devils (center Jack Hughes), and Islanders (center Brock Nelson) combining for five of the 23 slots. Elsewhere, Sweden will carry two area players--Devils wing Jesper Bratt and Rangers center Mika Zibanejad (Devils goalie Jacob Markstrom was selected but is injured), as will Finland with Devils center Erik Haula and Rangers defenseman Urho Vaakanainen.
With such a cross section of teammates becoming adversaries for two weeks, there can be skepticism over how hard the players will go. From past experience, the answer is “very.” If you don’t think Canada wants to destroy the U.S. in Saturday’s prime-time affair in Montreal, you’ve been on a news sabbatical. The atmosphere for that one game will be electric. Similarly, every time Sweden and Finland face off, the two teams want to shove each other through the boards, as Haula (semi-facetiously) promised he’ll do to Bratt.
A villain like Bruins cheap-shot artist Brad Marchand will become a hero if he contributes to a Team Canada victory while Panthers agitator Matthew Tkachuk will be hailed if he helps the U.S. bring home gold in the city where he eliminated the home team in the last two Stanley Cup playoffs.
It promises to be a fascinating tournament, one where I think Team USA has a good chance of triumphing. They have the best goalie (Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck) and strong specialty units with Hughes and Fox joining Toronto’s Auston Matthews on PP1 and two of the league’s top faceoff artists on the penalty kill in Trocheck and Detroit’s Dylan Larkin.
Team Canada, of course, is loaded as well with guys like Edmonton’s Connor McDavid and Colorado’s dynamic duo of Nathan McKinnon and Cale Makar. And don’t forget Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby, a proven big-game wrecker. The brain trust also made sure to take the details guys like Tampa Bay’s Anthony Cirelli and Brendan Hagel, but I think their goaltending choices will come back to bite them in the end.
You always have to watch out for Team Sweden, which plays a rather unique (and often boring) style of international hockey. They have some gamebreakers in Bratt, Detroit’s Lucas Raymond and Vancouver’s Elias Pettersson while goalie Filip Gustavsson has had a very good season in Minnesota. For whatever reason, their system is ingrained upon them from birth, so don’t be surprised if Sweden comes out with the strongest effort in Game 1’s contest versus Canada on Wednesday.
Finland, on the other hand, is hurting and just doesn’t have enough of the top-end talent of the other invitees, though Florida’s Aleksander Barkov and Carolina’s Mikko Rantanen certainly qualify as All-Stars. If former Ranger Kaapo Kakko can get a spot, you’re going to be a heavy underdog.
Finals Prediction: Team USA over Team Sweden