When does international hockey really matter?
Some thoughts on things after the first player, to my knowledge, voluntarily opted out of the 4 Nations.
It was announced yesterday afternoon that Alex Pietrangelo was withdrawing from February’s 4 Nation’s Face-Off, the first “best-on-best” international hockey tournament we’ve seen since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey.
Pietrangelo, who is now 35, is opting out of the tournament to “instead prepare for the remainder of the regular season,” with the Golden Knights.
Which is all fine and good. Then you stop and realize that later that same evening, Pietrangelo played 24 minutes and 22 seconds against the Florida Panthers, the second most of the Golden Knights, meaning whatever Pietrangelo’s ailment is, it’s not serious enough to keep him from playing NHL game before and after 4 Nations.
I don’t care about Pietrangelo’s decision, in fact I bet more NHL owners would prefer their players put team over country1, but it does bring up a larger point — what needs to happen for the 4 Nations Face-Off to really matter?
At its core, 4 Nations is an exhibition showcase between national teams for an award with zero history and, at this point, very little meaning. Whichever country wins the gold medal2, will deal with some sort of asterisk, whether it’s the fact that Russia isn’t involved for political reasons or that such a tournament ignored the fourth and fifth-ranked countries in the current IIHF World rankings — Czechia and Switzerland.
History also matters, and since 4 Nations feels a lot like a one-off, this is nothing more than an appetizer before the 2026 Winter Olympics.
And, to be clear, appetizers are great, but you don’t schedule your life around potato skins and mozzarella sticks3.
4 Nations, like potato skins, will pass the time and with the right degree of spice will become mildly more memorable. The last time we had best-on-best hockey, sponsored by the NHL, the most memorable team was a weird amalgamation of players under-23 from North America4.
I think the other problem, or at least my problem, is we are always seeking the equivalent of international competition that we have in global soccer, and to a lesser extent now global baseball5.
And in global soccer things have to be earned, other than a host country and defending champion, no one automatically qualifies for the FIFA World Cup. There’s rounds of qualifying leading up to the tournament, which makes the tournament itself, for some fans, a multi-year fascination.
In hockey, the actual international tournament of real consequence happened back in late August and early September, where the final three spots for the 2026 Winter Olympics were determined in qualifying tournaments with Slovakia, Denmark, and Latvia each snagging Olympics bids6.
Detroit Red Wings forward Marco Kasper played for Team Austria, who finished third in a group that Slovakia. For Kasper, who has also represented his country at a pair of IIHF World Championships and at World Junior, helping his country reach the Olympics is a career goal.
“It’s gonna be tough, because there’s a lot of countries around us and in similar spots (to Austria) when it comes to hockey wise, but that’s something that’s really important to work toward, getting into the Olympics,” Kasper said.
It’s something that Los Angeles Kings captain Anze Kopitar also has a pretty good understanding of.
Kopitar is the only Slovenian in the NHL, he’s also carved time in his career to play in so-called “lesser” international tournaments to help Slovenia work toward Olympic qualification.
While you may remember Kopitar playing for Slovenia in the 2014 Winter Olympics, he also has played in qualifying tournaments for the 2018 and 2022 Olympics, even though he wouldn’t have even been able to play if Slovenia reached the tournament itself.
“For me in the past whenever I had the chance to play for the national team I did, whether it was the Olympic qualifying or the world championships, whatever the level,” Kopitar said. “It’s a little bit unfortunate with the timing of it at the end of August, so some players aren’t motivated to go (from the NHL), but to me the chance to help get Slovenia to Olympics was reason enough.”
For Kopitar it’s not an obligation, but he feels a sense of pride in helping grow hockey’s profile back in Slovenia. His dad, Matjaž Kopitar, was a long-time head coach for the Slovenian national team, and Kopitar said in the long-run, he envisions doing more with Slovenian hockey after his career7.
These are the stories that 4 Nations Face-Off misses, while we can gawk at super teams, and it’ll be fun, it’s an invitational tournament and nothing more.
That’s my opinion, and I shared that with Red Wings forward Lucas Raymond, who will play for Team Sweden next month.
For Raymond, this tournament matters, but there were two very specific things he brought up.
Beating Finland.
Proving to Team Sweden he’s worthy of a spot in the Olympics in 2026.
That’s not to say Raymond doesn’t want to win, far from it, but those other motivators feel like larger driving factors.
Sweden vs. Finland, I believe, is a bigger rivalry than the United States and Canada in hockey. Yes, USA-Canada might have better players, but aside from us hockey nuts and those who jingoistically become hockey fans a couple hours, the winner and loser of the USA-Canada game isn’t going to be much more than a sporting event.
In Finland and Sweden, though, losing that game against their archival is going to sting a bit more and cause some more grief at home, not just for those playing the game.
And the second point Raymond made brings us back to the meals vs. appetizers comparison.
4 Nations will be cool, the hockey should be good. But if you miss it, like Pietrangelo chose to, you still have time for the main course.
This season multiple NHL team officials have complained, quietly, how much this tournament has condensed the schedule.
Wait, do they even have medals?
I have schedule my life around getting the proper chips and queso. Having moved from Texas to Michigan, one of my greatest regrets is not being able to get proper Tex-Mex and Mexican food (yes, they are different, but both wonderful). In fact, one of our first friend events after moving to Michigan involved a fantasy football draft with someone making “tacos.” My wife and I arrived to the party excited for Tacos, and quickly remembered we were back in the land of midwestern white tacos, where somehow ground beef and a tortilla are enough.
For all the “we need Crosby and McDavid on the same team” BS, the NHL could have simply done that in 2016.
World Baseball Classic, Trout vs. Ohtani for a championship, was awesome.
France is a designated alternate, which means if Russia is ineligible for Olympic qualification they would get the bid.
But not coaching, he said he probably wasn’t “cut out for that.”