Week 9: The Four Nations Rosters Have Dropped, What Even Is Best-On-Best?

Today is Thursday, December 5th 2024, which means that this past Monday, each of the rosters for the Four Nations Face Off tournament coming in a couple of months were submitted, and that yesterday, they were officially announced by the NHL. With maybe the exception of Tyler Seguin’s potentially season-ending hip surgery, it’s all that anyone is talking about in the world of hockey.

I’m not here to give you an analysis of the lineups that each of the four countries are taking to the tournament. I think that there’s enough of that going on already, and everybody else both has more knowledge and better takes on that than I do. My general opinion is that the people in charge of putting these rosters together are the people who re the best in the world at doing just that — putting rosters together. Who am I to challenge them on their decisions? Most of all I personally don’t feel like I know enough about anything to make well-informed decisions about who got snubbed and why any of the specific decisions are crazy or bad or going to lose the team the tournament or anything like that. After reading through these rosters, they all look really good. I know there are also really good guys who didn’t make the team obviously, but that was always going to happen. There are a lot of good players in the world, and only a very select number get to make the team. Some of them were never going to make it.

I also don’t necessarily want to step into the debate about whether teams should take the 20 most skilled guys they possibly can, or whether they should take the 20 guys that best fill the needs of a perfect team. The “ghost team” model, as it seems to be begrudgingly referred to in Canada. (And, as it might be referred to begrudgingly for years to come, given how Canada put their roster together for this tournament and how fans have reacted to it so far.) I think it’s an interesting debate, but I generally have no patience for arguments that are based around the All Star Game being boring. I understand that players aren’t skating quite as fast or taking it quite as seriously in no-stakes “best on best” hockey, but I will always ride hard for watching hocky in which the players are having fun. And anyone who tells me that the players in the All Star Game — or rather games, plural, now — aren’t having fun is out of their minds.

Basically, the case I have not patience for being that putting skill-first rosters together — as happens in the All Star Game — makes for boring hockey, and therefore teams should build a roster around the best fits for various roles on a perfect team. I would argue that skill-first rosters don’t make for boring hockey to begin with, and that even if they did, an All Star Game in which the players don’t have any skin in the game is going to produce a level of competition that is far below a tournament which — by all accounts — the players are taking seriously and taking as an honor to be a participant in.

I know that it sounds like I just expressed a strong opinion about how the rosters should have been put together, but let me state again, that is not my project. Truly! And the reason is because even if these teams were put together with galaxy brains, they’re still really freaking good. All four teams have highly skilled rosters — I think folks have often lost sight of the fact that that was the whole point of the tournament in the first place — and the tournament is being referred to as best-on-best, because for the most part, it is!

That is, for the most part.

Credit where credit is due, even the folks riding hardest for this tournament have maintained that it is more of an appetizer to Milan 2026 —the Olympics — than anything else, but still, it has been referred to almost relentlessly as best on best. And is it?

Let me be clear, it isn’t that I have a problem with the tournament existing or the rosters that are being fielded for any of the teams. I think in certain cases, it is indeed best on best. But I also think that a best on best tournament that doesn’t include Russians feels… silly? The third best squad in the world get sat out of a tournament put on by the NHL — and which only includes NHL players, mind you — and they couldn’t find a way to let Russians compete under a different flag? I get the sanctions. Politically, I support them. But this is a league that allows players of Russian nationality to play competitively and professionally for private teams who are legally unaffiliated with a specific country. The same league is putting on this tournament and billing it as best on best while leaving the third — potentially second? — best roster at home. (At home, for the record, in North America, where they live and work legally). The sporting world has been very hazy and inconsistent about Russian competitors across the various leagues and federations and sporting events, and I’m tired of inconsistency. It doesn’t make sense to me to bar athletes for one competition put on by a league but not bar them from all competition. If only it felt consistent I would have no problem at all with the decisions made, but it doesn’t feel consistent.

Moreover, the two European teams might not consist of only NHL players if this were an Olympic tournament. One of the things I find most exciting about watching Olympic hockey — for the record, Olympic basketball is the same for the Summer Olympics — is watching someone who doesn’t play in the NHL have a breakout tournament and go toe to toe with some of the sport’s biggest names. I love that stuff. Because sometimes, a country’s best doesn’t mean just a country’s NHL talent. It would be so fun to watch an 18 year old Swedish prospect put Hellebuyck on his rear with a nasty deke, put up 10 goals in 4 games, and then recede into Swedish domestic league obscurity. That kind of story is what magical international competitions are made of! And we won’t see it. For the most part I think that’s okay. With these four teams especially, their rosters probably would look very similar to what they’re putting up even if they didn’t have NHL-only requirements. It’s really only in the larger formats that we see teams with non-NHL talent going head to head against the McDavids and Matthewses of the world.

I guess the major upshot of all that I have to say about the Four Nations Faceoff is something that isn’t all that groundbreaking. The long and short of it is that they could have done it better. And yet, that may not even be true. More accurately: there are other formats for international competition that are more exciting. I think that is a pretty uncontroversial true statement that doesn’t contribute much to the discourse surrounding the tournament. But I also think that that fact is getting blown out of proportion into something that looks a lot like criticism, and at times more like complaining. Which is unfair.

Look, the Olympic tournament in 2026 is going to be way more exciting. This is a fact. But the Four Nations Faceoff is also going to be a hell of a lot of fun! The brevity of the tournament, for one thing, means that a couple of unlucky bounces here and there and we could be in for an all-Euro final. It’s unlikely, but well within the realm of possibility. And that’s really exciting!

I grew up in Boston and I went to school at Northeastern, so I know a thing or two about four team tournaments. They’re a ton of fun every time, and the best team does not always — or even often — win. I think anyone who is disappointed, or even pessimistic about this tournament is wrong to be so. I also think that anyone who has billed this tournament as best on best is selling a bit of a false bill of goods, but that the tournament isn’t any less exciting for being what it is. It’ll be fun, and we’re lucky we get to watch it, and that’s really that on that.