It is a good and strange time to be a hockey fan. It's a perfect storm: the 4 Nations Face-Off going far beyond expectations, the U.S. and Canada engaged in uncustomary and very stupid geopolitical beef, the NBA having existential conniptions over its disastrous all-star game. The numbers back up the anecdotal evidence that casual fans are paying attention to the tournament in a way they haven't acknowledged hockey in years; I've been hearing from non-fan friends about that bellicose USA-Canada game this weekend. With this wider attention inevitably comes getting caught up in the culture wars. Pick your poison—hockey can be used to support any pet take, no matter how deluded or xenophobic. It's enough to invert the classic plea: Please don't like my sport.
But that's the price of popularity. And if Thursday night's U.S. vs. Canada winner-take-all final of the first best-on-best tournament in a decade attracts some of the "wrong" type of audience members, that's not my problem, or yours. We get to enjoy two incredible hockey teams who genuinely dislike each other settling things on the ice. Nothing but pride and bragging rights will actually be on the line, and that's more than enough.
Canada punched its ticket to the final with a comprehensive destruction of Finland on Monday afternoon that turned into squeaky bum time once the Finns pulled their goalie. 4-0 quickly became 4-3, until a Sidney Crosby empty-netter from center ice let a nation exhale.
I don't think there's anything to take away from the chaotic ending, other than that weird shit happens. The game's other 55 minutes, though, saw Canada at its scariest: dissecting a motivated and feisty Finnish squad with speed and skill, including goals from Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon in the first five minutes, backstopped by a competent Jordan Binnington. It was an offensive cohesiveness that Canada didn't show against the U.S., or perhaps wasn't allowed to by a lights-out American blue line. That remains the thing to watch on Thursday, especially if American defenseman Charlie McAvoy, who was hospitalized yesterday with a still-mysterious upper-body injury (Update: it's an infection; Update 2: he's out), can't go.
Similarly, there's very little insight to be found in Team USA's tune-up against Sweden Monday night, a meaningless game for both teams after Canada clinched earlier in the day. The Americans were without McAvoy, Auston Matthews, and Matthew Tkachuk, and lost Brady Tkachuk to injury a few minutes in after he slid into the goalpost. Coachspeak is always gnomic, but Mike Sullivan didn't sound too concerned for Matthews's or the Tkachuk boys' status Thursday.
As for the game itself, Team USA scored its first and only goal just 35 seconds after puck drop, as Chris Kreider cleaned up a rebound.
Sure, the game ended 2-1 Sweden, but I'm only showing the U.S. goal. Look at the URL bar; this isn't dåefåectör.se. Deal with it.
So now we get the matchup everyone wanted—the one this whole tournament was created to facilitate. The one we've waited 11 years for (the 2016 World Cup was fun but fully half the teams didn't comprise a single nation's top talent). The players are just as pumped and jacked as we are. "We feel like we could beat those guys," Nate MacKinnon said. "I’m expecting the best environment I’ve ever played in on Thursday night," Matthew Tkachuk said.
It is hard to enjoy this week without wondering why it took so long. The answer was and has always been money. The NHL claimed it didn't get any sort of tangible financial boost from Olympic participation, and the IOC refused to compensate the league for the revenue that would have been lost by shutting down for a couple of weeks in the middle of the season. A 2020 World Cup failed to materialize in the middle of talks on a new CBA. The NHL decided to put on its own tournament, which it can profit from, which is how we got 4 Nations. Cynical motives can still lead to great events, however. I'd urge you to keep all this in mind, and to read Ryan Lambert on who deserves the credit here: the players. This tournament didn't have to be as good as its been. The players taking it as seriously as they have is what's made it worthwhile.
The glow won't last. I imagine most viewers of Thursday's final won't stick around for Blackhawks–Blue Jackets on Saturday. But growing the game doesn't happen in a week, and there's good news to look forward to in the coming years: the World Cup will return in 2028, sandwiched between two Olympics with NHL participation. Get hyped for USA-Canada, but even better than 4 Nations is more nations.
