The NHL’s nation-based tournament is not the Olympics, and it isn’t really an all-star game either.
Instead of the typical all-star format used by nearly every other professional sports league, the NHL opted to create the 4 Nations Face-Off, featuring teams of players from Canada, the United States, Finland and Sweden.
The four teams will play in a round-robin tournament, taking place between Montreal’s Bell Centre and TD Garden in Boston, to accumulate points toward the title matchup at the end of February.
It’s not a bad idea to pit countries against one another, especially since the NHL banned its players from competing in the Olympics after 2014. It could be a nice primer, as the league is allowing players to return to true international play in the 2026 Olympics in Milan.
The slate of selected teams is rich with rivalries, which helps build up interest. Everyone outside of Canada is rooting against the longtime leader in just about anything to do with hockey, and as talent in the U.S. continues to develop, the North American rivalry intensifies. Sweden and Finland also share a border that has lent a sort of polite animosity.
Canada, the U.S. and Sweden are the top three current producers of hockey players in the NHL, respectively, and Finland isn’t far behind with the fifth-most NHLers behind Russia.
The four countries are part of the biggest issue that the tournament has — only four nations and their athletes get to compete.
The exclusion of Russia has been a standard in international tournaments, so that was not news, but Czechia is the biggest snub of the competition.
Some of the game’s biggest stars hail from the Central European country, like the Bruins’ David Pastrnak, who has become a favorite across the game, or the Colorado Avalanche’s newest acquisition, Martin Necas.
Five teams makes a weird math problem for a tournament, but no other country has enough NHL players to be able to put together a complete roster.
Since the NHL didn’t partner with the International Ice Hockey Federation for this event, only NHL players are able to participate, which puts limitations on which countries can be involved purely by numbers. One way around this would be to even out the number of teams with an “everyone else” team to make sure the best players are able to feature.
That solution approaches what a traditional all-star game format aims to do in the first place, though.
The appeal is in the name — it’s an opportunity for the game’s greatest players to take the ice at the same time. Kids can see all of their role models in one place. Fans can watch their favorites do media appearances and play alongside players they only ever get to compete against. All-star games do a great job humanizing the faces of sports in a competitive environment.
Much of this PR can be done at the 4 Nations Face-Off, too, but it would be missing many of the biggest stars hockey has to offer.
Pastrnak has made four All-Star Game appearances before this year, including the last two in 2023 and 2024. Leon Draisaitl and Nikita Kucherov are currently second and third in the league in points, but neither of them are from the countries in the 4 Nations Face-Off. Andrei Vasilevskiy and Igor Shesterkin, two of the game’s best goaltenders, are both Russian and can only watch.
Meanwhile, Jordan Binnington and Sam Montembeault, two very average goalies, are in net for Team Canada.
It’s hard to get excited about a best-on-best international tournament when the best of the NHL won’t be there.
Even the players don’t seem all that engaged, setting a poor example for the quality of hockey that can be expected. Alex Pietrangelo, a Las Vegas Golden Knights defenseman named to Team Canada, withdrew from the showcase to nurse an undisclosed injury. Later that night, he played over 24 minutes in a game for the Knights.
If the stars of the game would rather take a two-week vacation than represent their country on the huge stage the NHL provides, then fans need to manage their expectations for the entertainment value of the event.
A best-on-best international tournament is the best kind of competition when players are allowed to represent their countries and fight for pride and the growth of the game on a global scale. The 4 Nations Face-Off is a version of that idea that offers very little of what makes the idea actually worthwhile or even fun.
