This past week and weekend of Feb. 12-20, the NHL hosted its first ever “4-Nations Face Off” in history. The NHL, instead of doing an All-Star weekend like they did in years past, decided to have an international tournament with four countries competing. The countries were the United States of America, Canada, Sweden and Finland.
The reason that the NHL is hosting and making this tournament happen is because players who play in the NHL haven’t been able to play international hockey since the 2014 Olympics in Russia. The reason for this is that the players who play in the NHL have not been allowed to play for their countries’ teams because the team owners don’t want their players getting hurt while not playing for them. So the “4 Nations Face Off” tournament is kind of a preview for international hockey since the players will be allowed to play in the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.
The USA team was stacked with some big name players for teams all across the NHL. Arguably the best players on the team were Matthew Tkachuk from the Florida Panthers, Jack Hughes from the New Jersey Devils and Jack Eichel From the Las Vegas Golden Knights. Sweden is also a team that has some very good players in the league, like Adrian Kempe from the Los Angeles Kings and Rickard Rakell from the Pittsburgh Penguins.
The other two teams in the tournament are Canada and Finland. Canada probably has the best roster on paper. Some big names on Team Canada are Connor McDavid from the Edmonton Oilers, Nathan MacKinnon from the Colorado Avalanche and Sidney Crosby from the Pittsburgh Penguins. Finland on the other hand has a good team but doesn’t really have the stars like the other three teams. The most notable player on Team Finland is Mikael Granlund from the Dallas Star.
The first round of games consisted of a round robin set up. Every team played the three other teams and then the top two teams would face off in the championship. The first games were a Canadian win over Sweden with a score of 4-3, USA win over Finland with a score of 6-1, Finland over Sweden 4-3, USA over Canada 3-1, Canada over Finland 5-4, and then Sweden over USA 2-1.
The Championship of the “4-Nations Face Off” was between the USA and Canada. This game had tons of hype around it especially since the Canadians booed the USA anthem when they first faced off the first time in Montreal, Canada. The first game also started with three fights in the first seconds of the game. So when these teams met again in the tournament Championship many players said it felt bigger than a Stanley Cup game and said they would rather win this game than a Stanley Cup.
The game itself was crazy. It began with the anthems for both countries with a few boos for the Canadian anthem and cheers and claps for the USA anthem. The first period began slowly, but Nathan MacKinnion scored first for the Canadians. Then the Americans struck back with a goal from Brady Tkachuk. In the second period the USA scored first from Jake Sanderson which made the score 2-1. Sam Bennett made the scores even once again with a goal for Canada. No goals were scored or conceded in the third period so the game was forced to go to overtime. Connor McDavid gets the last laugh and scores for Canada winning them the first ever “4-Nations Face Off” tournament.
To wrap everything up, the “4-Nations Face Off” Tournament was a big success for the NHL and helped give viewers and hockey fans a preview for what to expect in the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy.
