The NHL is introducing a new mid-season tournament called the NHL 4 Nations Face-Off. It features the four best hockey nations in the world; the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Finland. Each will comprise their teams of the best NHL talent from those nations, and face off in a pool play style tournament. Each team will play against each other, and the teams with the two best records play in the final. It is being held from February 12th-20th, in the midst of the NHL season.
My first reaction to this was confusion. This is the first of its kind in NHL history. The NHL has never been one to diverge from the typical regular season and postseason format. However, times are changing within the sports world, and fans want to see more meaningful games. This is apparent throughout American sports with both the MLB and NFL adding two extra playoff teams, college football expanding to a 12-team playoff, and most importantly, the NBA adding in the In-Season Tournament. The public wanted more, and for the NHL to keep up they had to give more. And especially with how big of a success the NBA In-Season Tournament was, it was hard for the NHL to not capitalize on that.
After looking into it more, I am in favor of what the league is trying to do. Firstly, for many of the players, it is a little break, similar to the all-star weekend, that allows for recuperation during a long season. Beyond that, I appreciate making it a nationality-based tournament. If it was similar to the NBA In-Season Tournament and had every team participate, and say my New York Rangers got eliminated in pool play, I would have no desire to watch the rest of the tournament. Instead, the entirety of the United States can back the national team regardless of which NHL team you are a fan of. It also helps with international outreach, making at least Swedish and Finnish fans more invested in the NHL than normal (I’m excluding Canadian fans from this because they’re heavily invested in the NHL regardless of the seven Canadian teams in the league). Plus with it only being a week-long event it will not detract from any hype within the NHL regular season. All in all, I love the plan and am excited to see how the first edition of the NHL 4 Nations Face-Off pans out.
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Hey y’all! My name is Nate and I’m a statistics major with a sport and entertainment management minor. I am one half of the show “On the Bench” at WUSC. If you love sports, especially Gamecock athletics, you should give it a listen!