The marquee matchup for the 4 Nations Face-Off final is what we’re getting as the tournament comes to a close on Thursday night at TD Garden in Boston (8 p.m. ET; ESPN, ESPN+). The United States and Canada will meet for the second time in five days for the first men’s hockey best-on-best championship between the two nations since the 2010 Olympic gold medal game, which was clinched by Canada thanks to Sidney Crosby’s overtime goal.
“It’s a Game 7, right?” U.S. forward Jack Eichel told reporters. “It’s for everything. You’re going to see desperate hockey. You’re going to see everything you saw in the first game and more, I imagine. It’ll be great.”
It’s unlikely that the Tkachuk brothers are cooking up another fight-filled start to a game following the three-fights-in-nine-seconds opening to Saturday’s round-robin matchup — a 3-1 win by the Americans. But the intensity and temperature will ratchet up as the two teams vie for an international title.
While the 4 Nations Face-Off isn’t the Olympics or even the World Cup of Hockey featuring 8-12 countries, the players have helped sell the tournament, making it more than just a cash grab to boost hockey-related revenues and eliminate complaints about the NHL All-Star Game for a season (it will return next year at UBS Arena in New York, by the way).
“That first game, it put everybody on notice that this wasn’t just a walk-in-the-park tournament, that this is something the players wanted and are taking very seriously,” U.S. captain Auston Matthews said.
The opening moments from the first meeting helped broadcast the event to the masses, beyond the hardcore puckheads looking for competitive international hockey. Now, audiences will get what they wanted before the tournament even began, and the 4 Nations Face-Off final comes at a time when there is a geopolitical angle to the rivalry — something that used to be reserved for matchups against the Soviet Union.
“We came here for this purpose,” Canada head coach Jon Cooper said. “And now it’s win one more game. It just happens to be against the team that beat us after the fireworks that went off on Saturday night. Should be a pretty good made-for-TV event.”
One game for international glory
U.S. forward Matthew Tkachuk said he expects TD Garden to be the “best environment” he’s ever played in, which is a high expectation when you remember he played in Game 7 of a Stanley Cup Final just eight months ago, helping the Florida Panthers win the first title in franchise history.
Tkachuk and his brother, Brady, helped send a message the first time against Canada, dropping the gloves after the opening face-off to set the tone early inside Montreal’s Bell Centre.
But don’t expect Canada to try and mimic the Americans’ approach on Thursday night. Canada forward Brandon Hagel, who fought Tkachuk, said on Tuesday that his side isn’t orchestrating any tone-setting moments for the final.
“I think we’re out there playing for the flag, not the cameras,” Hagel said. “That’s a part of Canada that we have in there. We don’t need to initiate anything. We don’t have any group chats going on. We’re going out there playing our game and then giving it everything and doing it for our country. We don’t need to initiate everything. We’re just going to play as hard as we can and do it for the flag on the chest.”
This will be the fifth time in men’s competition that the U.S. and Canada will meet in a best-on-best tournament final. The Americans have only succeeded at the 1996 World Cup of Hockey. Now is USA Hockey’s golden era with a bevy of young stars who are the product of a development program created in order to match the success of their neighbors from the north.
Thursday night comes down to one game, not a best-of series.
It’s a Game 7 of a different magnitude.
“It means the world. You’re representing your country,” Eichel said. “This is huge. It’s the biggest game I’ve played in quite some time. Maybe ever. I’m really looking forward to it. I think everyone in the room is looking forward to it. That’s what we wanted, right?”
