Read all of The Athletic‘s 4 Nations Face-Off coverage here.
I’ve heard the consensus about the 4 Nations Face-Off.
Who cares? I won’t even watch. It’s a stupid tournament. This isn’t the Olympics.
If you’re a Sidney Crosby fan — and if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you are — it’s worth watching.
I don’t have a problem with the tournament, which begins Wednesday with Canada versus Sweden in Montreal, except that only four nations are playing. Simply talking about hockey, Russia should be included. Czechia too. This stinks. No question.
It’s a made-up tournament.
This is true. But let me ask you a question: Which tournament isn’t made up? Think about that one for a minute.
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When it’s best-on-best, it still matters for the greatest players of all time, and Crosby is on that list. Even though all countries aren’t participating, the tournament is still largely best-on-best. The best player in the world is Connor McDavid, and he’ll be there. The best player of this century is Crosby, and he’ll be there. Pretty much all of the best players in the world, with a few notable exceptions (Leon Draisaitl, Nikita Kucherov and David Pastrňák), will be there. USA-Canada long ago surpassed Russia-Canada as the best rivalry in the men’s game (USA-Canada in women’s hockey is the sport’s best rivalry right now). And, make no mistake, the United States and Canada will be there.
This isn’t an All-Star Game, which actually doesn’t matter and should never be played again on account of its irrelevance.
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This is real. This is four great hockey nations, some of whom don’t particularly like each other. This should be high-level, intense hockey in the middle of what has been a painfully boring NHL regular season, when ratings and interest are both down.
For the best of the best, this does matter.
What is Crosby’s legacy without the golden goal? Oh, he’d still be considered one of the greatest players of all time, of course, but that was his signature moment. It’s one of the most famous hockey goals ever scored. It came, quite obviously, in international play. Including the postseason, Crosby has scored 680 goals as a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Many of them have been breathtaking and memorable. Absolutely none had the impact of the golden goal.
What’s Crosby’s legacy without him captaining the 2014 Canadian Olympic team to gold and captaining Team Canada to the World Cup of Hockey championship in 2016? Sure, we’d still consider him among the great winners and great leaders in hockey history. But the fact is, Canada is on a golden run like the sport has only seen in the Russian Red Army days. Canada has won 25 straight games with Crosby on its roster. That’s not a typo. Canada is 45-5 all-time when Crosby wears its sweater. His international brilliance is a very significant part of his legacy. He’s the leader of what might be the greatest national team that ever lived.
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Wednesday in Montreal, he can continue writing that legacy. I don’t think he’s 100 percent healthy and I don’t believe Crosby would dare put anything ahead of his commitment to the Penguins, but don’t think for a second that this tournament doesn’t matter to him. As it should.
Penguins history is littered with some of the greatest players of all time.
Crosby. Mario Lemieux. Jaromir Jagr.
No franchise can match that trio. And despite all of their exploits in the NHL, their reputations and legacies were forever augmented by what they did internationally.
Jagr and Dominik Hašek almost won gold for the Czech Republic at the 1998 Olympics — especially noteworthy because it was the first time NHL players were allowed to compete in that tournament. All of the world’s big boys were there, and the Czechs’ essentially two-man team nearly earned gold. It was one of Jagr’s greatest moments and, though he was already the world’s best player at that time, it elevated his stature.
Lemieux’s most brilliant goal came in the 1991 Stanley Cup Final against Minnesota. But historically speaking, the goal that most remember as his most important was his winner in the 1987 Canada Cup (which was very much a “made-up” tournament, by the way). In Canada, it’s known as Gretzky to Lemieux. Here in Pittsburgh, we just call it Lemieux’s breakout moment. That’s where the baton was passed. It didn’t happen in the NHL because the two greatest forwards to ever play never met in a playoff series. It happened in Hamilton, Ontario, where, despite Gretzky’s brilliance in that fortnight, it was Lemieux who, just days shy of his 22nd birthday, had begun to exceed the Great One.
In perhaps the final act of brilliance in his NHL career, Lemieux captained Canada to Olympic gold in Salt Lake City in 2002. He did so on a hip that prohibited him from playing in all but one of the remainder of the Penguins’ games that season. He prioritized the tournament over the Penguins’ season, quite a brash move considering he owned the financially struggling team and he was the only box-office attraction. But he understood the opportunity presented to him. It was his legacy.
The greatest I’ve seen Crosby play boils down to two time periods. In November and December of 2010, Crosby was at his statistical best. He scored 32 goals in the first 41 games of that season and was on pace for 64 goals and 132 points before a concussion temporarily derailed his career.
The other time? The 2016 World Cup of Hockey, where he produced 10 points in six games and was named tournament MVP while leading Canada to a dominant victory. That, too, was a “made-up” tournament. Yet, it produced some of the greatest hockey ever played by one of the greatest hockey players of all time.
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International hockey matters. Yes, this is a flawed tournament and history will and should always note that. But it’s still Crosby, nearing the twilight of his career, wearing the Team Canada sweater. Chances are, he’ll do something in this tournament that we won’t soon forget. Missing it because you don’t think the tournament matters is your choice, but it would be the wrong one.
(Photo: Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
