Think about everything that happened in the 4 Nations Face-Off before the championship game Thursday. Think about the three fights in nine seconds Saturday, about the group chat that J.T Miller and the Tkachuk brothers used to coordinate those bouts, about the counter from Brandon Hagel — “we don’t have any group chats going on” — that followed, about all the other jabs that’ve followed in press conferences leading up to The Rematch that Canada won, 3-2, on Connor McDavid’s overtime goal.
Think about how in a normal year this would have been just the All-Star Game, about how this would have been just the 2025 edition of the Skills Competition followed by a mini-tournament of four teams determined by a draft playing three-on-three hockey. Think about how in future years this could just be the All-Star Game again, about how the 4 Nations — a not-so-mini tournament of four teams hand-picked by their countries — will be replaced by regularly scheduled programming, about how boring that could seem given what transpired across the last two weeks in Boston and Montreal.
Think about the political backdrop to these Team USA-Canada games, about how the players repeatedly insisted they didn’t want politics to seep into their games, about how impossible that thinking seemed as the United States national anthem was booed in Canada and the Canadian national anthem was lightly booed in the United States, about how President Donald Trump spoke to his country’s national team before their game on Thursday while referring to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau” that same day and expressing a desire to annex the country. Think about all the patriotic answers, about all the players who called this championship game their magnum opus in hockey, about the meaning of playing for the flag and for the country as NHL players finally made their return to an international tournament.
And then think about the 13 words from Jon Cooper buried in the middle of an answer Tuesday that captured everything this 4 Nations experiment morphed into. “Nothing’s done more for hockey in a decade than what this tournament’s done,” Cooper, moonlighting as the Canadian head coach before returning to the Lightning when the season resumes this weekend, said. Think about how he uttered that more than 48 hours before even knowing if his team won the event and could clutch the trophy and could stretch gold medals around their necks. Think about how the lasting impact of the 4 Nations event had already crystalized before the two finalists were even known, about how this was as much about igniting the present as it was about shaping the future of international hockey.
