Success of 4 Nations Belongs to Players, not the NHL

The 4 Nations Face-Off was, quite irrefutably, a smashing success.  From the first minute of Canada-Sweden to Connor McDavid's overtime winner to topple the United States, the event delivered thrilling, heart-in-your-throat hockey from start to finish.

Before the 4 Nations Faced Off, it was fair to wonder just what this event would bring.  It had no history, and it was unlikely to have a future (at least, in another four-team format).  Would the players want to invest themselves emotionally in an in-season tournament when they all knew there was a greater prize to be played for a few months down the line?

The answer to that question was a resounding yes.  The 4 Nations became the rare hockey event to immediately lure in the casual American sports fan, to whose viewing habits hockey is often less than an afterthought.  It became a 10-day hockey festival worthy of universal acclaim.

In celebrating the event, however, it's worth being intentional about where we the hockey-viewing public heap our praise.  The 4 Nations wasn't a triumph because of the organization or anything intrinsic to the event itself; the 4 Nations thrived because the players themselves made it matter.

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The event the NHL organized clearly had the potential for success, but it also had the potential to be another dud.  The 2016 World Cup of Hockey (which opened the year, rather than coming mid-season) didn't approach this degree of intensity.  Of course, we've seen All-Star Games that fall completely flat in terms of the product on the ice.  To include just 4 of the globe's hockey-playing powers severely limited the scope of the tournament and again offered serious potential to dampen the mood. 

Instead, what made the event work was the players' evident level of care from start to finish, whether in the furious pace of Canada-Sweden, the Tkachuk brothers setting a tone with their fists in the round robin game against Canada, or the catharsis of McDavid freeing himself from the yoke of struggling on the greatest stages with the OT winner.  There are few things more endearing to the sports-watching customer than that level of care.

Set against the 4 Nations was the NBA's annual post-All-Star Game crisis of competitiveness.  That is an event the NBA players clearly don't care about (and quite understandably so), and so, it is a dud to watch for any serious basketball fan.  It doesn't matter how you tweak the rules to provide novelty or attempts at incentives; if the players don't care, the game isn't worth watching.

Of course, the 4 Nations is not a one-to-one comparison to an All-Star Game; again, we've seen plenty of lifeless NHL All-Star Games.  However, thanks to the players themselves, the 4 Nations was anything but lifeless, and, in an age of increasing apathy, they deserve tremendous credit for making this contrived event matter.

So, in celebrating a fantastic return to men's international best-on-best hockey, remember to place credit where it belongs: not with the suits who kept us from games like these for nine years, but with the players who made them count when at last they returned.

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