No. 263: JAROSLAV HALAK, ANZE KOPITAR et al / Four Nations & no others need apply.

The NHL's mid-season international classic is a missed opportunity. They haven't even dropped the puck and already I'm missing Team Europe 2016.

IN a friendly game of poker, dealer’s choice, you’d dread passing the deck to Gary Bettman because he’d call acie-deucey-one-eyed-jacks. This is to say, the NHL commissioner takes every opportunity to trick up a perfectly good game with a goofy novelty.

Credit where credit is due: Bettman did get the NHL into the Olympics—five consecutively from 1998 to 2014. Alas, circumstances worked against the NHL the last couple of Winter Games. We can hope nothing crops up over the next 12 months that will stop Connor McDavid and the twentysomething generation of NHL talents from going to Milan and getting their first taste of Olympic competition. Fingers crossed that no act of God nor any science experiment throws up any roadblocks. Every report about bird flu has me on shpilkes—tell me, this isn’t another pandemic and plateaus with a 50-cents-per-yolk hit at Waffle House.

It has been a decade and many of us could have waited another year for international best-on-best, so long as it was on the Olympic stage. Not the NHL’s chief executive and shareholders, though. Thus, starting next week, fans of the game will be treated to the Four Nations competition: Canada, Finland, Sweden and the United States in a whirlwind late-winter tournament.

The best I can say about it … well, it’s streamlined, gotta give it that. An Olympic preview? Well, maybe. To my mind, it’s a chance to develop some preferred storylines in advance of the real event, like the WWE does in advance of Wrestlemania.

Still, the Four Nations feels unsatisfactory even before the puck is dropped. Leon Draisaitl is in the conversation for the league’s most-valuable honors again, but he won’t be playing. Neither will Alexander Ovechkin, whose chase of the league’s all-time goal scoring record has everyone checking summaries to see if he scored the night before. Neither will Roman Josi, a First All-Star Team defenceman last season and perennial Norris Trophy contender. Neither will David Pasternak, two-time First All-Star Team RW who is a mortal lock to one day be Boston’s all-time leading goal scorer. I could go on, but I won’t. You’re welcome.

This is to say, the Four Nations is not a best-on-best tournament, not with so many of the best left out. You could take it even one step further. Put together a team of players whose nations aren’t one of the four invited and you might be the favourite to win it all.

Fans of the game lament that, unlike footie or hoops, hockey is an international game but not really a global one. Eighty nations have qualified for FIFA’s World Cup across 22 tournaments—32 teams vying for the prize last year in Qatar, up to 48 in the next one in North America. Basketball isn’t quite as deep, but its reach is ever-expanding.

Meanwhile, hockey can’t get a dozen teams in place that will keep the field competitive. Eight seems like the ceiling, even though Latvia can beat Canada at the World Juniors. (Check out No. 249: LATVIA < KAZAKHSTAN / A meditation on the indignities of Canadian youth & That Supposed Hockey Holiday Tradition™.) It becomes an even greater challenge when Russia is barred from competing in events, whether staged by the IIHF, the IOC or the NHL. Of course, the prohibition is entirely justified, and hockey’s loss can’t be compared to Ukraine’s, but the point stands: The absence of Russia makes the pool that much shallower if you’re staging a hockey tournament.

The NHL’s Four Nations is going to be an exhibition—maybe, hopefully, not as empty as the All-Star Game, but that’s strictly TBD at this point. Matthew Tkachuk is hyping it like Macho Man Randy Savage. From the Athletic:

That’s on brand. How willing to pay the price will other players be with only momentary pride on the line? How many will be holding back a beat, knowing that the playoffs are a couple of months away? I know, some readers will say that I undervalue a professional’s pride.

The Athletic polled 110 NHLers across assorted nationalities, not just the Four Nations participants but those watching like the rest of us. and came away with some interesting results. Check out: Do NHL players care about the 4 Nations Face-Off? Here’s what they said.

Kinda interesting results: 82 percent overall said they cared. How much did they care? The Athletic didn’t lay that out and break it down. It could range from more-important-than-life-itself to I’ll-glance-at-the-highlights. As a student of human nature, I’d suggest that the 82 percent cited might overstate to attention and emotion involved. Players of every nationality would have wanted to avoid pooh-poohing the event—“I’ve got more important things to do” might have been closer to the truth for some who expressed at least a passing interest.

Every Finn polled said he cared about the tournament, compared to 91 percent of Canadians, 85 percent of Swedes, 81 percent of Americans. Point of pride, I guess, the Finns going in as the plucky underdog and ever punching above their weight in international tournaments. As for other nationalities, they could care less, I suppose, but not a lot less: 36 percent said they cared, while 64 percent admitted that the Four Nations mattered not a whit to them.

Even those who are playing and wholly invested in the tournament next week see the big picture … or bigger pictures.

Stanley Cup > Four Nations: Nobody wants to compromise his shot or his team’s chances at the NHL’s big prize with an injury suffered in the February novelty.

Olympics > Four Nations: No matter who comes out on top this month, any pride or disappointment will be muted by the fact that they don’t hand out medals for the preliminary round.

You could make it emphatic in type, something like Olympics >>>> Four Nations, but the point stands.

Is it Stanley Cup > Olympics or Olympics > Stanley Cup? A select few get both a gold and a name engraved on the Cup and either is a great line in the CV. Still, the point is personal, I suppose, but it will also be moot next week once the puck drops.

What makes the Four Nations format particularly goofy is the fact that players for one team in the last World Cup of Hockey final aren’t eligible for the Four Nations. Remember that 2016 World Cup? Yeah, an international event that didn’t rise to the commemorative-postage-stamp level.

Hard to believe it has been nine years but back in the summer before the World Cup, folks in Sportsnet management were laying plans of coverage of the event, which was pieced together by the NHL entirely for the network’s benefit. Back in 2013 Sportsnet had entered into a massive broadcast deal with the league and secured control of the Canadian rights for 12 years, total damages being $5.2-billion. The folks at Rogers had to have been disappointed on the ROI—ratings and revenues fell short of projections, what with Canadian teams underperforming across the board and the Maple Leafs utterly abysmal. No coincidence that every tournament game would be played in Toronto at a venue handy to Rogers HQ.

An international best-on-best tournament should have been a license to print money when the big dogs met, but Rogers would be giving away PSAs and airing in-house promos when, say, the Swiss played the Slovaks or whatever.

How to gin up interest? Someone came up with the idea to fill out the eight-team field with two sides that didn’t represent a nation per se. That they even seriously entertained it bespeaks their naked desperation. That no one in the aftermath was taking credit for the brainwave and trying to dine out on it is a sure sign that it ranked as an aesthetic failure or a commercial one or, almost certainly, both.

One confection was Team North America, which featured Canadian and American next gen stars, 23-and-unders, including Connor McDavid coming off his rookie season and Auston Matthews entering his. The other was Team Europe, cobbled together from Slovaks, Germans, Swiss and assorted other nations who couldn’t ice an entire roster of NHLers. These two teams filled out the field, pretty much as placeholders.

I was particularly attached to Team Europe, which is to say that I didn’t attach myself. No, no, the attachment was an executive decision at Sportsnet, the outfit I was working for at the time. While other staffers drew the plum assignments of covering the heavyweights, I was designated for doormat duty. The message: This clown show is going to run for three games and then become a footnote. Write it up like a Washington Generals preview before a tilt against the Globetrotters.

Contributing to the sideshow aspect: Team Europe was being coached by Ralph Krueger, who had done some work with Hockey Canada, but most recently had been director of Southampton, a side in the English Premiere League—keep in mind, this was before Ted Lasso.

All curiosities aside, this wasn’t high-profile stuff in a working newsroom, something you’d pass off to an apprentice. Anything I wrote about Team Europe would be buried in the mix of World Cup stories, getting less play than anything out of the Canadian team’s camp—BREAKING NEWS, Brad Marchand trims his moustache WITH VIDEO. Any other veteran scribe would be resentful of being foisted with European All-Sorts, but I put up no resistance. Thankfully, they were convening training camp in Quebec City, one of my favourite stops and the closest thing to a bit of Europe on this continent.

I didn’t lack for stories: I wound up writing at length about Anze Kopitar, who was named captain of the side, which like a good fit given that he was being promoted from an A to the C with Los Angeles that fall and had been, with Drew Doughty, the defining player on the Kings’ two Cup winning teams. Not so conspicuously, he had been putting together a Hockey Hall of Fame career. Fans might under-value him, what with the Kings not being a contender for the first five years of his career, most games starting with a 10 p.m. Eastern puck drop and a game long on efficiency and industry rather than flash, but players I’ve talked to don’t.

(I’ll put the Kopitar piece below the paywall at the foot of this entry.)

It’s getting on to nine years ago, but reasonably dedicated followers of hockey know how this played out.

Team North America brought an energy and enthusiasm to the World Cup. If you had wanted to see where the league was going, the young stars were the safe bet—Nathan MacKinnon broke through at the event and McDavid looked electric.

As for Team Europe, Leon Draisaitl, Roman Josi and friends utterly busted tournament planners’ grand design, making it all the way to the best-of-three final. And really it was Jaroslav Halak, nobody’s idea of a Hockey Hall of Famer or an All-Star or even a franchise goalie, who disrupted the hockey world order. Halak wasn’t even the presumptive starter for Europe when camp opened—it had been a long time since he had backstopped the Canadiens to a first-round upset of the Presidents Trophy-winning Capitals in 2010.

Jaro’s rookie card is available for $4, ditto Anze’s (which is a bargain), but Draisail’s is $700.

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Yeah, when the league and the network cooked up the World Cup, they had hoped for a Canada-U.S. final, maybe Canada-Russia or whatever. No such luck.

The Americans lost all three games they played, the crusher being their opener, a 3-0 loss to Europe, Halak stopping 35 shots for the shutout.

Canada did face Ovechkin and Co., but in the semi-finals. In the tensest session of the tourney the home team prevailed 5-3, Sergei Bobrovsky being peppered with 47 shots and the line of Crosby-Bergeron-Marchand driving play.

Meanwhile Europe upset Sweden in OT in the other semi-final, with Tomas Tatar scoring the winner. Yes, Tomas Tatar, a useful piece, better than a journeyman, but nobody’s idea of a Cup contender’s first-liner. Zero star quality.

Sportsnet producers must have been reaching for the promotional-size whiskey bottles at that point. Canada-Europe had no history for narratives to draw on—for that matter, no future either. It wasn’t the start of a rivalry—this configuration wouldn’t be repeated anytime soon if ever.

The Canadians won the final in two straight games, although they were trailing in the third period of Game 2, thanks again to Halak. Sidney Crosby took home the tournament MVP honors—hey, he had only one Cup and two Olympic golds at that point, so he needed stuff to pad his resume.

I’m all for giving the Conn Smythe Trophy to stars on runners-up teams and recognizing those who get their crews thatclose. Never has there been one more deserving than Jaro Halak. He had been great for Slovakia in other international tournaments, most notably in the 2010 Olympics when he stoned Russia in an upset in the opening round and the Slovaks made it all the way to the bronze-medal game, where they lost to the Finns. Yeah, he had a silver medal from the under-18s back in 2003, but still, that World Cup MVP would mean a lot more to him than to any of the other contenders (Carey Price and Patrice Bergeron, say). As for the championship, the whole enchilada, ‘twas to dream.

For all the stars Team Europe had, they were punching above their weight class because of Halak alone. And what people didn’t recognize, for the whole lot of them on Team Europe’s roster, that World Cup was their best single shot at international glory.

Would Team Europe be workable in this mid-season tournament? A Young Guns team? Would kinda take the “Nations” part out of the Four Nations theme, but, hey, take it to branding. Yeah, you could claim I’m making up a problem where one doesn’t exist: He doth protest too much, again. I’ll watch the games—not by appointment, just if they’re convenient—but I’ll also draw up rosters for Team North America and Team Europe could have been for this tournament and wonder, what if.

Thanks for reading. And again, the Kopitar piece from 2016 is below the paywall.