The 4 Nations Face-Off, which got underway Wednesday night with Canada eking out a 4-3 overtime win over Sweden, marks a return to best-on-best hockey for the first time in nearly a decade.
Players and fans have been clamouring for an event like this since the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and the last World Cup in 2016 but politics, economics and stubbornness have prevented NHL players from competing in Olympic Games in Pyeongchang and Beijing and have scuttled attempts to stage World Cup events.
A return to international hockey has been on the players’ wish list as the NHL and the NHL Players Association prepare to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement.
The 4 Nations Face-Off isn’t a true best-on-best format, because it is missing some key players, but it will offer a mini-preview of the Olympics next year in Italy.
And it is setting the stage for more international competition. Hours before the opening faceoff Wednesday, the NHL and the NHLPA also committed to playing in the 2030 Olympics in France and staging a World Cup in 2028, although the details are sketchy beyond the fact it will be played in February during a break in the NHL regular season.
The 4 Nations Face-Off is welcome because it is offering legitimate competition over the 10-day event. It might be too much to expect the intensity provided by a Stanley Cup finals or an Olympic gold-medal game, but it’s already a major upgrade from any iteration of the NHL All-Star Game. The Canada-Sweden game started slowly, but overtime provided high drama and cemented Sidney Crosby’s reputation as one of the all-time greats on the world stage. Canada is now 26-0 in international games when Crosby is team captain.
The event is limited to NHL players, which is why you won’t see a team from Czechia, Slovakia, Germany, Latvia or Switzerland, which simply don’t have enough NHL players to ice a team.
And there’s no Russia.
Russia has been a sporting pariah since a state-supported doping program was revealed after the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and there have been further sanctions by sports governing bodies in the wake of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
Earlier this month, the International Ice Hockey Federation extended its ban on Russia and Belarus from international competition through the 2025-26 season. As for the Olympics, the IOC will make the final decision on Russia’s participation, but the smart money says the Russians will be told to stay home. Three dozen Russian athletes were allowed to compete at the Paris Olympics last summer as individuals, but they were not identified as Russians and there were no Russian teams.
But the 4 Nations Face-Off is a different matter. It’s not an IIHF event and there is more than a hint of hypocrisy in shutting out the Russians. They are allowed to play in the NHL and they pay dues to be members of the NHLPA.
The league’s website provides daily updates on what it has dubbed the GR8 Chase, Alex Ovechkin’s pursuit of Wayne Gretzky’s career goal-scoring record. Personally, I would bar Ovechkin because he is an unapologetic fanboy for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But I suspect that Ovechkin, who has no qualms about benefiting from a decadent capitalist system, is an outlier and most of the Russians in the NHL share the views of New York Rangers star Artemi Panarin, who is embarrassed by the situation in his homeland.
This made-up tournament would be more interesting with the Russians. Who wouldn’t want to see Ovechkin, Panarin, Nikita Kucherov, Kirill Kaprizov and rookie star Matvei Michkov scoring goals? Defence? Former Canadiens Mikhail Sergachev and Alexander Romanov are among the nine Russian defenders playing top-four minutes.
And Russia’s only problem in goal is trying to pick a starter from among Vézina Trophy winners Andrei Vasilevskiy, Sergei Bobrovsky and Igor Shesterkin.
Finally, the NHL is setting a bad precedent because they may have to ban the United States from the 2028 World Cup if Donald J. Trump invades Greenland, Panama or, God forbid, Canada.