The first (and perhaps only) 4 Nations Face-Off is less than 48 hours away. Festivities will kick off in Montreal on Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. CT, with Canada versus Sweden. As a refresher, the tournament will consist of seven matchups: six round-robin games and a championship match on Feb. 20 between the top two clubs in the standings (which will use a 3-2-1-0 points system!).
Canada’s roster, while still without a couple of glaring omissions, remains the favorite. Icing the duos of Connor McDavid–Mitch Marner and Sidney Crosby–Nathan MacKinnon on two different lines will do that for you – especially with two-way dynamos Sam Reinhart and Mark Stone on their respective left wings (at least to start, per Chris Johnston of TSN and The Athletic). Add in a dynamic “checking” line of Sam Bennett, Anthony Cirelli, and Brandon Hagel, plus a defensive corps quarterbacked by Cale Makar and anchored by top shutdown presence Colton Parayko, and there aren’t many question marks among the skaters despite names like Mark Scheifele and Nick Suzuki being left off the roster.
Goaltending, as discussed at length in the public zeitgeist, will be the make-or-break factor. All signs point to 2023 Stanley Cup winner Adin Hill as their Game 1 starter. While he’s already recorded a career-high 20 wins through 34 starts for the Golden Knights, his .900 SV% and 2.64 GAA are rather pedestrian, and his 8.8 goals saved above expected ranks 21st in the league (per MoneyPuck). He’s good but not great – making it an especially damning decision for Canada to leave Vezina Trophy contender Logan Thompson off the roster. He’d give them a much more legitimate contender to compete with the Americans’ Connor Hellebuyck and the Swedes’ Filip Gustavsson, both bonafide top-10 netminders in the league based on this season’s sample.
While Hellebuyck stands as the primary reason for the United States’ optimism for a championship, their left-wing depth has allowed them to ice Kyle Connor, Jake Guentzel, and Matt Boldy on different lines. A one-two punch of Jack Eichel and Auston Matthews down the middle puts them much closer in talent there to Canada than the two European participants, and while they’ve lost their top defenseman in Quinn Hughes due to injury, a top pairing of Jaccob Slavin and Adam Fox gives them a combination of arguably the league’s best defensive mind and a player who’s produced over 70 points for three seasons in a row.
Down seasons from most of Sweden’s center corps mean they look thin up front, with Elias Pettersson and Mika Zibanejad anchoring their top six. A largely veteran group, especially on their depth lines, also raises some questions about whether declining talents like Viktor Arvidsson and Gustav Nyquist will be able to keep up with the scoring depth of the Canadians, Americans, and even the Finns. But their top two goalies, Gustavsson and Linus Ullmark, give them a clear advantage at the position over everyone but the United States, and their defensive corps boasting two-way dynamos like Mattias Ekholm and Gustav Forsling, in addition to some of the league’s top offensive talents give them a fluid blue line that can compete for a title.
Finland’s championship candidacy looks incredibly bleak after injuries decimated their blue line, keeping star Miro Heiskanen out as well as solid depth pieces Jani Hakanpää and Rasmus Ristolainen. Their goaltending trio of Kevin Lankinen, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen and Juuse Saros grades out more similarly to Canada’s than it does to the U.S. or Sweden, so they’ll need to rely on their forward group for success. They have scoring depth in spades, with Aleksander Barkov, Sebastian Aho, Roope Hintz, and Anton Lundell all centering their own lines. An elite sniper and power-play piece in Patrik Laine helps things along in addition to having names like Mikko Rantanen and Mikael Granlund in their top nine. But how effective will Finland be with the man advantage with Utah depth defender Juuso Välimäki projected as their top power play quarterback?
Who do you think will win the tournament? Have your say in the poll below!
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With the NHL’s overall viewership down 28% year-over-year I wonder if the NHL will get any sort of bump from this 4N tourney. I have a feeling most will just catch some YT highlights and call it a day.
When the Americans win, yes, viewership will rise.
The Canadians will win if their goaltending hold up.
The NHL hype machine is in top gear in It’s effort to sell the fans a series of meaningless all star games. Let the manufactured history begin.
Canada will win and Trump will say the tournament was rigged. And put a 25% terra on anything that’s intelligent coming into the United States.
Shhhhhh
Now if you can tell us what a terra is…..
A land based tax, maybe?
Leave politics out of this please.
4 stacked teams but the USA goalies will be hard to beat so they are my bet
USA should win, but tournaments like this often come down to who gets the bounces.
A whole 2 weeks of not watching hockey, should honestly be a summer event like the IIHF, the All Star game has been unwatchable for a few years now and this will honestly be boring, i dont really expect 100% effort coming from everyone for injury prevention
Who cares? Another North American pro sports league thinking some sort of “in season tournament” will solve their viewership issues. This isn’t the Olympics. The all-star game isn’t a better alternative but they need to come up with something other than this trash.
You sure told ’em! Guessing that you won’t be watching but will you please keep posting tantrums during the event?
I don’t think goaltending is gonna matter as much as people think. I also don’t have much faith in Hellebuyck as a big game goalie given his abysmal playoff record.
Where is the “who cares?” option?
These “Rah Rah” events about loving your country can take a hike for all I care. I’ll maybe watch the “highlights” and that’s a big maybe.
I’ll watch major jr before I watch this.
The Capitals will win, because they don’t have any players accumulating wear & tear in this meaningless waste of time.
This gary tournament . Only happening because Americans have best team. Call me when real touranment hopefully happens olympics. Don’t be surprised if americans don’t win this one . Gary finds way to not go to olmypics.