Hockey is Canada’s sport.

In Boston’s TD Garden on February 20, Connor McDavid scored a dramatic overtime winner against the US to secure the 4 Nations Face-Off final for Canada. 

McDavid’s shot was reminiscent of Sidney Crosby’s historic golden goal at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. Like the 2010 team, this year’s Team Canada was defeated by the US in the preliminary round before turning it around and securing an iconic sudden-death winner when it mattered the most. 

Despite concerns that the tournament would be a glorified exhibition tournament, the on-ice event proved to be a highly competitive, thoroughly entertaining affair. 

Considering the heated political tensions between Canada and the US, the tournament took on an added layer of significance, serving as a sporting battleground over national pride — especially for us folks up north in the ‘51st state.’ Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — or the “governor” of Canada — put it best when he posted on X after the game: “You can’t take our country — and you can’t take our game.” 

The return of best-on-best

The 4 Nations Face-Off is an in-season tournament organized by the NHL between ​​Canada, the US, Sweden, and Finland. 

Since the 2018 International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) World Championships, NHL players have not had the chance to compete internationally for their nations due to failed negotiations between the NHL, National Hockey League Players Association (NHLPA), the IIHF, and the International Olympic Committee over insurance, revenue, liability and scheduling, as well as the pandemic. 

The tournament was also the first international competition organized by the NHL since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey in Toronto. But with the success of the 4 Nations Face-Off, it’s safe to say that best-on-best tournaments are well and truly back.

In the immense hype leading up to the 4 Nations Face-Off, the NHL also announced that the league’s players will be allowed to participate in the 2026 and 2030 Olympics, for the first time since the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. The NHL also announced during the tournament that the World Cup of Hockey would return for its fourth-ever iteration in 2028, leaving much for fans to be excited about in upcoming years.

Canada’s tournament

On February 12, Canada opened the Face-Off with a solid 4–3 overtime victory against Sweden in Montréal. The highlight of the game was undoubtedly Nathan MacKinnon’s power-play goal just 56 seconds into the game after the three greatest Canadian forwards of our generation — McDavid, Crosby, and MacKinnon — combined on a tic-tac-toe play during their first-ever shift together in Team Canada red. 

It was a moment that left hockey fans frothing at the mouth — a once-in-a-generation moment. 

On February 15, the team then fell convincingly to the US 3–1. It was a heated affair from puck drop, as the tournament produced yet another iconic moment when, immediately after the puck dropped, three back-to-back fights broke out in the span of nine seconds. If this didn’t fire up some Northern patriotism, I’m not sure what would. It was a moment you would only see in an NHL-run game, as fighting is illegal in IIHF and Olympic tournaments. 

Needing a win to advance past the round-robin stage, Team Canada then dispatched Finland 5–3 on February 17 to give the Canadains a chance at redemption in the gold medal game.

In one of the most exhilarating games of twenty-first-century hockey, the tournament reached its climax on February 20 as Canada won it all with a score of 3–2 against the US in overtime. MacKinnon was named tournament MVP as Team Canada secured their third consecutive best-on-best tournament gold. 

Political power plays

While the on-ice performances were dramatic on their own, the international political climate truly set the stage for an electric tournament. 

In my opinion, Russia has the third-best roster in the world. However, the team was not invited to the tournament due to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. In a press release, the IIHF stated that it “believes it is not yet safe to reintegrate the Russian and Belarusian National and Club Teams” to international tournaments. In other sports, many governing bodies have taken a similar stance. It is furthermore unclear whether Team Russia will be able to participate at next year’s Olympics.

Closer to home, the tournament was underscored by the recent friction in Canada-US relations. Following President Donald Trump’s continued tariff threats and insulting rhetoric surrounding the annexation of Canada, the tournament became a point of pride for many Canadians, who were not going to give the United States any satisfaction — symbolic or otherwise — in our own national sport. The symbolic sporting resistance predated the tournament, as basketball and hockey fans booed the US national anthem in the weeks leading up to the 4 Nations Face-Off. 

To raise the stakes even further, Trump personally called Team USA before the gold medal game to wish them luck, in addition to hammering home the ‘51st state’ rhetoric on Truth Social — a social media app founded by Trump — the day of the final. 

Some American players, such as JT Miller, stated in a press conference that the call was “pretty cool. [It was] so awesome to hear the support… It’s a pretty big deal for him to take time out of his schedule to talk to us… It’s been really fun so far to see the support from everybody up to the president, it’s been pretty wild.”

Hockey wins big

In terms of viewership and participation, hockey lags far behind the other ‘Big Four’ North American sports. Even soccer, which has a historically weaker foothold in North America, has surpassed the NHL in popularity in recent years. Amid a lull in hockey popularity, the 4 Nations Face-Off was an unrivaled success in igniting interest in the sport. 

The tournament replaced the annual NHL All-Star Game, which took place in Toronto last year. Following criticisms of the lacklustre NBA and NFL all-star events, the 4 Nations Face-Off seems to be on another level in terms of an entertainment product. This was reflected in the record viewership numbers, as ESPN reported that the final was their all-time most-watched hockey game with 16.1 million viewers — 9.3 million in the US and 6.3 million in Canada — tuned into the game. With these numbers, the NHL was able to successfully leverage the relatively quiet sports calendar between the Super Bowl and the new MLB season with the tournament. 

Following the media hype surrounding the tournament, American superstar Matthew Tkachuk appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where he would go on to describe the final game as “the biggest game of his career” — lofty words coming from a player less than a year out from winning a Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals. 

In a high-stakes clash marked by dramatic on-ice heroics and off-ice political tension, Team Canada seized the 4 Nations Face-Off title to secure the country a much-needed moment of unity. But this wasn’t just a win for Canada — it was a win for the entire sport of hockey.