It has been so long since we’ve seen best-on-best hockey that you forget how great it really is.
Yes, the 4 Nations Face-Off is a contrived event with no history and no future, but you have to admit it’s working.
Canada-Sweden was some amazing hockey that garnered huge ratings and the impending Canada-US showdown on Saturday night in Montreal is going to be epic theatre.
The best-on-best format shows how the game can be played — a beautiful back-and-forth display of speed and skill. Pure artistry. Great drama.
Players who can’t keep up, the ones who rely on obstruction and a blind eye from the officials to compete, are left at home. This is where talent is allowed to shine its brightest and it’s a pretty great product.
Enjoy it while it lasts because we are never going to see this in the NHL. The league is too watered down for that and the referees wouldn’t allow it anyway.
If you want to reduce the NHL to about eight teams and play one-game playoff series and a one-game Stanley Cup final, you’ll have all the free-flowing artistry you want.
Me, I like the aggression and “toxic masculinity” that makes the NHL playoffs so wonderful. The perfect hockey game is 5-4 with at least two fights.
That’s the great thing about hockey — we can have the best of both worlds. It has two distinct personalities. Baseball is baseball. Football is football. Basketball is garbage. But hockey can be Sweden-Canada in a 60-minute track meet or Edmonton-Vegas in a seven-game war.
Best-on-best is great is small doses, but give me a hard-fought, seven-game war of wills every time.
TWO NATIONS FACE-OFF
Let’s be honest, it’s really the Two Nations Face-Off.
The whole thing is built around the massive Canada-U.S. showdown on Saturday and the two teams potentially meeting again in the final next Thursday.
Sweden and Finland are only there because you can’t shut down an entire league to host a two-team, two-country event. Sweden did throw a scare into Canada, no question, but that was more about a couple of shaky goals against than anything else.
We all know what every hockey fan in the world, outside of Sweden and Finland, wants to see happen — a Canada-USA final.
If the Swedes or Finns — or, heaven forbid, both of them — get through to the final, it would be a nightmare for the ratings and the tournament.
SWEETHEART OF A GAME
Good thing Valentine’s Day isn’t Saturday or a lot of ladies would be eating chocolate in front of a hockey game on the TV.
This is something we’ve been waiting a long time for and it’s magnified even more by the fact that Canada already is in a must-win situation.
If they lose to the Americans in regulation, they’re sitting at two points through two games with America at six and Sweden, if they beat the Finns on Saturday, sitting at four.
That means Canada has to beat Finland on the final day, which they should. But the U.S., with nothing to play for and knowing they’d be better served by avoiding Canada in the final, will have to beat the Swedes. No guarantee there.
McDAVID IS JUST FINE
Connor McDavid looks great out there. Any concern that he wasn’t himself lately is washed away when you see him playing a level above the best players in the world.
Maybe regular-season McDavid understands the situation and is saving himself for the playoffs.
Just do enough to finish first in the Pacific and then hit the gas, like he’s doing right now, when it really matters.
CREASE CONCERNS
The Canada-Sweden game illustrates again the importance of goaltending in a short series. A couple of iffy goals against at the wrong time can send the better team home. Losing the goaltending battle usually means losing the series.
That’s why some Oilers fans remain jittery about riding Stu Skinner (2-4-1 in his past seven) into the playoffs. Skinner’s record against top teams isn’t good and he’s a notoriously slow starter, posting an .879 save percentage in the first period this season.
On the other hand, he’s a fighter and he and Calvin Pickard did lead Edmonton to the Stanley Cup final last year.
Whatever the Oilers do in goal at the trade deadline, it’s going to be the major storyline of the playoffs.
HYPOCRITICAL BOOS
So, Quebec vetoes a cross-country pipeline that would have opened the door to markets around the world and made Canada energy self-sufficient?
And, in turning its back on a Team Canada approach (while still sponging $100 billion in equalization/welfare payments from Western Canada over the past 10 years in order to stay afloat), it left us reliant on America for 90% of our exports, with our oil supply to Ontario having to run through the U.S. first.
Then they boo the American anthem because somebody is doing something that isn’t good for Canada?
Classic.
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