4 Nations Face-Off Game 1:
Canada vs. Sweden
It’s 2025. Twenty years have passed since Sidney Crosby was drafted into the National Hockey League as hockey’s next “generational player”, ten since Connor McDavid arrived to similar fanfare. To say both have lived up to the heaping helpings of hype that surrounded them would be an understatement.
Yet somehow, the joint standard bearers as the best Canada has to offer in its most-beloved sport have never had the opportunity to line up as teammates. That changes tonight, when both will wear the red maple leaf in hockey’s first “best on best” tournament in 8½ long years.
Not all of the best, mind you. The four-team mini-tourney includes Canada, USA, Sweden and Finland but excludes such traditional hockey powers as Russia and Czechia, not to mention top-level players from Slovakia, Slovenia and Germany to name a few. The full-menu feast will have to wait for next year’s Winter Olympics, which will include NHL players for the first time in a dozen years. For now, hockey fans can consider this event something of an appetizer for the highest level of international puck that we haven’t seen in far too long.
Best on best hockey got its introduction in the Summit Series of 1972, the first time NHL pros — or (recognized) pros of any stripe — got a chance to shine on the international stage. Just two teams were involved in that epic showdown, mind, though the contrast between their completely different styles of play against the political backdrop of the Cold War produced drama and international intrigue of the highest order, with the winner decided in the 60th minute of the eighth and final game.
BoB tournament play soon followed with the Canada Cups of 1976, 1981, 1984, 1987 and 1991, and its offshoot the World Cup of Hockey in 1996. The next breakthrough came in 1998 when full-fledged professionals were finally welcomed into the Olympic Games, with encores in 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014. World Cups were sporadically interspersed in 2004 and 2016.
That made it 13 variations of BoB tournaments in the four decades between 1976-2016. But since then, absolutely nothing as the NHL chose not to get involved in the Olympics of 2018 or 2022 nor to revive the World Cup.
Meaning there has been exactly one tourney befitting the “best on best” descriptor during McDavid’s sparkling ten-year career, and even that came with a wrinkle. While Crosby headlined another Canadian powerhouse that ultimately won the gold medal, the 19-year-old McDavid found himself on a makeshift eighth team dubbed the Team North America Young Stars or some such. It was an entertaining squad to say the least, featuring such youthful talent as Nathan MacKinnon, Jack Eichel and Auston Matthews as well as the mercurial McDavid, but lacked the defensive maturity to advance to the medal round.
8½ years of radio silence later, McDavid will finally get his chance to represent his country in a BoB event. And for #97 to line up with #87, the numbers on their backs representing their birth years and the ten-year gap between them.
There was never any real question as to which would be selected as team captain. That will deservedly be Crosby, with McDavid as one of his assistants along with Cale Makar.
Crosby enters this event with a remarkable record as Captain Canada. Previously:
- Olympic Games of 2014. Canada rolled to a 6-0-0 record and the gold medal.
- World Championships of 2015. After his Pittsburgh Penguins were ousted from the NHL playoffs, Crosby arrived in time for Game 2 to find the captaincy waiting for him. The squad went 9-0-0 the rest of the way to win gold.
- World Cup of Hockey of 2016. 6 games, 6 wins, gold medal.
Do the math, and various editions of Team Canada have posted a 21-0-0 record with Sid Crosby as captain. TWENTY-ONE straight wins.
Crosby would back up that sensational run of international success in 2014-15-16 by captaining his NHL squad, Pittsburgh Penguins, to consecutive Stanley Cup wins in 2016 and 2017 (though the Penguins did lose a game or two along the way!). In all he won five major championships in a 40-month span, an epic run of team triumph on various stages.
Indeed, Crosby’s trophy case is chockablock with honours of various types at both individual and team level. Their representation on his player page at Elite Prospects is ridiculous:
The set includes on the team level:
- one World Junior gold (2005)
- two Olympic golds (2010, 2014)
- one World Championship gold (2015)
- one World Cup gold (2016)
- three Stanley Cup rings (2009, 2016, 2017)
The only bauble missing from the Big Six being the Memorial Cup, where Sid finished as a runner-up in 2005. (The only players to have won all six are a pair of Canadians, Hall of Famer Scott Niedermayer and the not-fully-appreciated Corey Perry, currently McDavid’s teammate with the Edmonton Oilers.)
McDavid’s own trophy case is pretty packed, not quite to the level of Crosby’s though he is of course a decade younger.
On the individual level, he compares fairly well to his famous elder. Leaving aside the wide range of awards both won as juniors, the duo have copped the following major honours in the NHL:
- Hart Trophy: McDavid 3, Crosby 2
- Ted Lindsay Award: McDavid 4, Crosby 3
- Art Ross Trophy: McDavid 5, Crosby 2
- Rocket Richard Trophy: Crosby 2, McDavid 1
- First team All-Star: McDavid 5, Crosby 4
- Conn Smythe Trophy: Crosby 2, McDavid 1
To this point, however, McDavid’s list of team titles doesn’t stack up.
- one World Junior gold (2015)
- one World Championship gold (2016)
The closest the two came to an overlap came in the consecutive IIHF World Championships of 2015 and 2016, both won by Canada. This was back in the Decade of Darkness, when Oilers players tended to flock to this event. In 2015, for example, Crosby found a home on a line with Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle, while future Oiler Mike Smith was the main man in the pipes for what was dubbed the “best ever” Canadian team at that event.
A year later, McDavid was the goal-scoring hero of the Gold Medal game, essentially a 1-0 goaltending duel (with a last-second empty netter) between then-Oiler Cam Talbot and future Edmonite Mikko Koskinen. Talbot was ably backed up by one Calvin Pickard, while the skaters included Hall and Perry along with Cody Ceci. He also lined up with three fellow members of the current Team Canada in Brad Marchand, Mark Stone, and Sam Reinhart. Such is always the nature of this tournament that players make first contact with future teammates. For #97, it was his first taste of team success at the senior level, and it remains the only one.
McDavid would assume the captaincy of his Oilers that fall of 2016, but the ultimate goal remains elusive. The club made the playoffs for the first time in over a decade the following season and made some noise in the postseason. But it would be a further five years before the squad won another playoff series.
In the season just past, the club made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals before falling a single goal short in a gut-wrenching Game 7. The Conn Smythe Trophy he deservedly won for a brilliant postseason went unclaimed in the post-game ceremonies, so crushed was McDavid by the defeat. He caught plenty of heat for that, entirely undeserved in the opinion of the writer. It was surely a no-win scenario: the same perma-critics who ripped Connor for his no-show would have gleefully ripped him for putting self above team had he put in an appearance. Such is life in the social media age.
There is one way for McDavid to silence those critics, and with due respect, it won’t be happening at the Four Nations Face-Off. What the current event does offer is the opportunity, at long last, to play with the very best his country has to offer in a BoB style event. Not McDavid’s fault that the powers that be in the NHL passed up the opportunity to play in both Olympics during his first decade, or that they messed around with the format in his one and only World Cup.
Which brings us to tonight’s Canada v. Sweden contest, in which McDavid will line up against friends like Mattias Ekholm and Viktor Arvidsson, and with foes like Crosby. The two won’t be linemates — McDavid will play between Reinhart and Mitch Marner on one high-powered trio, Crosby likely on the left side with fellow Cole Harbour, NS native Nathan MacKinnon along with Stone on another.
Those lines will coalesce in a potentially awesome powerplay unit that includes Crosby, McDavid, MacKinnon, Reinhart and Makar. Let’s just hope that the stripes will see fit to call the odd penalty along the way.
Connor McDavid is 28 now, a seasoned if not grizzled pro. Yet I would submit the next ten days represents a terrific learning opportunity for the Oilers superstar, playing with and against the very best in the sport, Sid Crosby foremost among them. And perhaps, just the change of pace needed for #97 to recharge his batteries in the midst of what has been at times a trying season.
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