What We Learned: Best-on-best hockey rules, and the NHL can't take credit
BOSTON, Massachusetts – In terms of "entertaining games," this Four Nations tournament is 4 for 4 so far.
Not all of them have been masterpieces or anything, but there's been plenty to like in every single one so far, and that's really all you can ask for. And so while everyone is saying, "It's so nice to have best-on-best back," and, "Man I missed this," and, "I've waited nine years for this," I'm begging you to do one thing for me: Let's not forget that we haven't had best-on-best for nine years because the people running the NHL didn't think it was in their best interest to let you see it.
The idea of sending NHL players to the Olympics is a relatively new thing; starting in 1998 and ending in 2014, it lasted less than two decades before they took it away from you again, and they did that because according to this article on its own website says, the resulting interest spikes in the NHL following the various Olympics in that time "weren't boons" for the league.
Real Gary Bettman quote from that article: "The ultimate impact it had on the game worldwide was negligible."
Can that be true? How is that measured? Does the fact that there is no American player carryover from Sochi mean nothing other than "nine years have passed?" Because here's a real quote from Dylan Larkin just yesterday,
“Tonight I was thinking about kids watching that game, and what kind of message (it conveys). The work ethic, the compete, you know, guys blocking shots. I hope kids are watching that like I was as a kid and wanting so badly to put that jersey on in the next generation.”
I suspect what Bettman meant back then is that putting the league on hold for two or so weeks in February is that revenues did not immediately rise. And I'm sure the fact that the league has seen revenues explode in the nine years since Sochi is proof, to them, that staying home has actually worked out great.
There was never a chance they were gonna go to Korea in 2018, and I get it because the time difference is brutal for North America. Something like a 5 a.m. puck drop on the East Coast for the gold medal game isn't gonna work for anyone.
You can see the logic even if you disagree with it. The league then told the players they could go to Beijing in 2022 as part of the return-to-play agreement to come back from COVID, but you had to have a strong suspicion it wasn't super excited to actually follow through on them — which it ultimately didn't because COVID delays in December came to a head and required serious schedule shuffling.
Some could call the general policy of not letting you see actual best-on-best hockey good for business (again, look at how revenues have grown from 2014 to present), others could call it corporate greed that has iltimately deprived fans and players of something they really value. It's a matter of perspective, but the end result is the same: No Olympic participation for the bulk of the prime years for players like Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Steven Stamkos, and so on.
So it's not hard to see why, if Olympic hockey doesn't provide a big "boon" for the league, the 2016 World Cup and this absolutely awesome Four Nations tournament happened: The NHL is making money off it. And it's only letting players go to the Olympics next year because no one wants labor unrest right now. That's it.
None of that is to say the International Olympic Committee is good, or the International Ice Hockey Federation is run well. Probably the only reason the NBA never had these problems is because Olympic participation doesn't disrupt the NBA season like they do the NHL's. But the NHL and NHLPA couldn't figure out a 2020 World Cup in time to actually organize it, amid other labor issues. COVID kind of forced everyone to come together on that ancillary stuff in a way that, a little more than a year earlier, didn't feel like a given. In the end, they couldn't have held it anyway.
To be fair to the NHL, they couldn't have scheduled this more perfectly. The week after the Super Bowl, no NBA to go up against (apart from the Skills Competition), and during a long weekend. But the Four Nations Faceoff had doubters going in, partly because of how weird the 2016 World Cup felt (Team North America, Team Europe, it was being played during what would have normally been training camp, etc.). You had to wonder how hard these guys would play in a tournament that felt at least a little slapped together and with at least one hockey power notably absent from the proceedings.
But within a few minutes of the first practice, it was clear that all the stated excitement wasn't just PR. These guys always always always wanted these games as badly as the fans did. And that includes the fans in the media — myself included — who are acting like Tex Avery cartoon wolves for every game now. As well they should, because this tournament has kicked ass and I love it.
So in the next few days, when there's a big victory lap from the league about all the tickets they sold and how strong the ratings were and how much people have praised it, keep this in mind: The players are the ones who made it this entertaining.
The reason this tournament is so, so good is the same reason the NHL is good. It's because this is an awesome sport and when the players are engaged, with Stanley Cup winners saying out loud that some round-robin game in a goofy tournament that didn't exist until a few days ago and will probably never exist again after someone picks up a trophy on Thursday night is "the biggest of [their] career."
This is the best sport in the world. When every guy on the roster is putting the pedal to the metal, as they have specifically because almost none of them have ever played real best-on-best hockey, this is the inevitable result. These games physically couldn't have been bad.
USA coach Mike Sullivan called Saturday night's border battle "a celebration of hockey at its highest level. Canada coach Jon Cooper said, “The game is in a better place” because of the quality of the Saturday night border battle. Hopefully that's true, but the league deserves no credit for this, because we should have had this the entire time. Sure, this weekend would have felt less special, and frankly might not have happened at all because it wouldn't have fallen in the normal cadence of World Cups and Olympics.
But I think we'd all take the tradeoff.
What We Learned: Four Nations Edition
Canada: Look I know a lot of people are harping on Jordan Binnington's performance in these games so far, because he's given up one suspect goal in each and accordingly cost the Canadians three or four points in the standings. And while it's once again nice to be vindicated I didn't watch Saturday's game going, "The goaltending is the problem here."
The Canadian offense looked pretty disjointed here. They only scored on a McDavid breakaway and for the most part I think it's fair to say the US got them to play a John Tortorella-style game, which largely does not suit them. They don't have enough guys who can play that style comfortably, though they do have a couple of the guys who are among the best on the planet at it. If anything, this is on the Canadians for not being able to dictate the terms on which the game was played. Maybe its different with Cale Makar and Shea Theodore in the lineup, but also maybe it's different with Quinn Hughes in there, since he's better than them.
Anyway, yeah Binnington is once again in the "he'd like to have one of those back" camp, which was entirely foreseeable.
Finland: God did that game rock. Finland, the team down to literally its second-last defenseman in the league, playing its arch-rival in what absolutely felt like an afterthought given the primetime matchup, completely delivered the shock of the tournament. Because it's not that they won, it's how they won.
They deserved to win in the "deserve-to-win-o-meter" sense, despite not starting out too well. As the game went on, they kind of flattened out the Swedish offense and limited chances in a way that felt like exactly what they need to do to have a hope of advancing to the final. It worked until it didn't against the Americans, but the Finns flipped the script on Saturday. Awesome stuff, and now it's a three-way tie at the bottom of the standings that puts enormous pressure on everyone.
You almost couldn't have designed it better, except to say that you'd maybe want that US/Canada game to go to OT so the Americans weren't absolutely assured a finals berth no matter what happens on Monday. Still gotta say I don't have a ton of hope for these guys against Canada, but… stranger things have happened.
Sweden: You can take a moral victory from coming back against Canada, in Montreal, to force overtime and take a point you maybe didn't deserve. I don't know how you can feel about blowing a lead late in the second period then losing in OT, with both your goalies looking not-so-good. Except to say that you have to be extremely disappointed.
No one had Sweden as a favorite to make the final — everyone thought that would be US/Canada II, unless they were going off the board out of spite or because this is hockey and weird things happen all the time. But now these guys are basically playing not come in last at a tournament with a clear No. 4 and that has to be tough to swallow; much like with Canada,
I don't necessarily blame the goalies (although, again, woof) so much as I blame the offense generating like 4 expected goals in regulation across two games. William Nylander and Elias Pettersson in particular kinda feel like no-shows in terms of driving the offense and I don't know what they can do about it. Oh well, I guess. It's a short tournament that ultimately means very little. At least, that's what I'd be telling myself if I were a Swedish fan. This is tough to see.
United States: I'm not joking when I say this. I think Saturday's game was the official moment when Connor Hellebuyck became the frontrunner for the league's MVP award. He'd been getting the talk here and there but people still really wanted to give it to a forward. Not that Four Nations play should be considered for the award, but realistically it will be. With no forwards standing out from the pack, I think you gotta say Hellebuyck is the favorite at this point. Still depends on how he does down the stretch, obviously, and how much Winnipeg actually uses him. But man, what a performance against the Canadians, huh?
Gold Star Award
Hockey kicks ass, huh? Just absolutely rules? Yeah, at this point, you gotta say that it does.
Minus of the Weekend
If I never hear the word “anthem” again that would be fine with me.
Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Week
User "TFHockey" is dialed in:
To Edmonton:
Michael Kesseling (RHD) $1.4 M AAV X2 then RFA
Nick Bjugstad (C) $2.1 M AAV Pending UFA (50% retention makes it $1.05 M AAV)
Karel Vejmelka (G) $2.725 M AAV Pending UFA
To Utah:
Calvin Pickard (G) $1 M AAV X2
Viktor Ardvisson (W) $4 M X2
Oilers 1st round pick 2026
Oilers 3rd round pick 2026
