The NHL and NHLPA announced the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament to take place in 2025 and that NHL players can go to the next two Winter Olympics. Adam Proteau reacts.

The NHL and NHL Players’ Association made news Friday with the revelations – expected ones, at that – that a four-team, best-on-best tournament would be staged in 2025 and that NHL players would be participating in the next two Winter Olympics. 

The four-team tournament – named the 4 Nations Face-Off featuring teams from Canada, the United States, Sweden and Finland – would take the place of the All-Star Game next season. A city in Canada and another in the United States will host the nine-day festivities from Feb. 12 to 20, 2025, speculated to be Montreal and Boston. Each team will have 20 skaters and three goaltenders selected by each country's respective national hockey associations, and the players must be under contract and on an NHL roster by Dec. 2, 2024.

Each country plays each other in a round-robin with three points for a regulation win, two for an overtime or shootout win, one for an overtime or shootout loss and nine for a loss in regulation. After that, the best two teams face off in a one-game final. The NHL is also experimenting with 10-minute 3-on-3 overtime before a shootout in the round-robin, while the final would be playoff-style, where the game continues until someone scores.

“The international composition of National Hockey League rosters is unparalleled, and NHL players take great pride in representing their countries,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in a statement. “We are pleased that today, after intense collaborative efforts with the NHL Players’ Association and the International Ice Hockey Federation, we can formally announce that NHL Players will participate in both the 2026 and 2030 Olympic hockey tournaments.”

“For years, the players have embraced the opportunity to compete for Olympic gold, and we are excited that today’s announcement makes it a certainty for our members in the 2026 and 2030 Olympic Winter Games,” added NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh. “We also know that hockey fans worldwide have long been anticipating the next best-on-best international competition, and now they can finally see some of their favourite players represent their countries and line up together.”

The geopolitical state of the world has forced the exclusion of Russian athletes from many prominent events, and the four-team tournament is one of them. Bettman also said in Friday's press conference that with the timeframe they had, they could only do four teams instead of including nations and players, such as Germany's Leon Draisaitl and Czechia's David Pastrnak. It won’t be all the best athletes at the four-team series, but it will provide high drama, and the 2026 and 2030 Olympic Games, you’ll truly see the top players squaring off.

If the four-team event succeeds – and there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t – we’re going to see more such tournaments in non-Olympic years. The 2016 World Cup was the last type of best-on-best tournament, and if political unrest resolves itself, we can see the NHL expanding from four nations playing one another to more in 2028 and 2032. It’s a matter of finances, and so long as all parties involved feel like they’re getting their money’s worth, we’re going to guess these partnerships will continue.