Slow Down! The 4 Nations Face-Off Was Exciting, But It Wasn't A Game Changer For The NHL.

The 4 Nations Face-Off was undoubtedly a massive success. I don't think even the most optimistic hockey fans thought it would enthrall the way it did. The biggest achievement was how it brought audiences to the television who don't traditionally care about hockey—a cultural moment that people wanted to be a part of. Amidst a tumultuous political landscape, the perfect battleground was created for Canada and the USA to throw punches (literally). However, hockey fans and talking heads alike have overdosed on the Kool-Aid, because this won't grow the NHL in the way that so many are desperate for.

First and foremost, the NHL deserves kudos for the concoction of the 4 Nations Face-Off. It replaced a failing All-Star Game and brought in viewership that hockey hasn't seen outside of international play or the Stanley Cup. The game drew an astonishing 16.1 million viewers on average across our continent and a remarkable 9.3 million in America. In the end, it was the most-watched hockey game in ESPN's history. People cared because, even though the tournament technically meant nothing, it meant everything to these players. What some fail to realize, however, is that this event succeeded due to reasons not transferable to the NHL. On top of that, hockey has barriers that plague the sport, and this tournament provided zero answers to them.

To start, one must acknowledge that this tournament wasn't an NHL event. The fact that it was organized by the NHL means nothing. Yes, people initially bought into the tournament because the best players in the world were there, but that's where the connection starts and stops. It achieved astronomical levels of success for one reason and one reason alone: Canada vs. USA. I've read some articles and listened to media outlets that referenced this as one of the most-watched NHL games ever. That is false. It was an international one.

International tournaments can help grow a sport, but that's not always the case. More importantly, they don't necessarily help grow domestic leagues. Take the NBA, for example. It has participated in the Summer Olympics since 1992. But if you look at television ratings since then, there has never been a notable uptick in a season that followed the Olympics. More importantly, even if there has been a small increase, it's never been a sustained one. Let's look at last year when Team USA faced France for the gold medal in Paris. The game attracted 19.5 million viewers in North America, the most-watched international basketball match since 1996. Despite that success, NBA viewership is down by five percent this year. If the NBA—a league with a far more accessible sport than hockey—couldn’t grow through such an event, then why would the NHL? The only true way to grow a sporting league is to get people to tune into an event showcasing the teams within it. For the NHL, this tournament did not provide that.

Next, the political turmoil that plagues the two countries contributed heavily to the intrigue. The idea promoted by Trump to assimilate Canada with the USA pissed off Canadians to the nth degree. Topping that off, the morning of the "gold-medal game," Karoline Leavitt, the President's press secretary, said that America was looking forward to beating its soon-to-be 51st state. This did nothing but throw jet fuel on an already raging fire, and those who belonged to either nation were ready to root for their country even more passionately.

Nationalism is an aspect of life that unites individuals unlike anything else, and that's something the NHL cannot replicate. It is far easier and takes much less time to entice someone to rally behind a national team than a local one. There’s a grandeur and prideful aspect to cheering for your country that can't be captured otherwise. The vast majority of people who tuned in—especially the new audience that the league is trying to attract—didn’t care that Auston Matthews and Jack Eichel were going head-to-head with Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon. The names on the back of the sweaters meant nothing to them. It was the names on the front that meant everything.

What this tournament did succeed at was creating an event. People wanted to tune in because it felt like a cultural moment that couldn't be missed. The reason the NFL is king here in North America is because they've created a model that provides fans with multiple events a week—Thursday Night Football, Sunday Night Football, and Monday Night Football. Each team plays 17 games, once a week, and every match feels like it has an urgency and importance to it. This tournament had that. The NHL’s regular season does not. The 82-game regular season makes it nearly impossible to create any sort of eventized atmosphere. It’s a tough ask for newly intrigued hockey fans to go from the excitement of those two Canada-USA games to the mundaneness of the NHL regular season. I can promise you that game 59 of the Vancouver Canucks' 82-game schedule will not capture even an ounce of the urgency and intrigue that those matchups did. It's like if you convinced someone to eat beef for the first time, provided them with Wagyu steaks for a week, and then told them all they could eat after that was Arby’s roast beef. I’m open to arguments, but I’m gonna guess that individual hops off the beef train.

This isn’t to dump on the NHL. The NBA and MLB suffer greatly from these issues as well, but it’s a reality that a lot of hockey fans overlook. Take myself, for example—arguably the prime target that the NHL wanted to attract with a tournament like this. A massive sports fan with an Americanized mindset, who even enjoys curling if you add enough intrigue to the moment. The NFL and college football are king to me. I follow MLB throughout the regular season, and I’m as addicted to their playoffs as Trump is to spray tans and hair dye. The NBA provides me with enough drama and divas to keep me intrigued. The NHL, though, has always eluded my regular schedule. With having a podcast and blog, I force myself to watch and stay up to date. Generally, though, I’m clocked out of the season unless my favorite team, the Philadelphia Flyers, is in the playoff hunt. Unfortunately, that’s about as frequent as Joe Biden’s public appearances. The tournament was a hell of a ride, but I haven't been any more compelled to regularly turn on a game than I have in the past. I feel like the exciting hockey ended Thursday night with McDavid’s overtime winner, and I doubt I’m the sole believer of that sentiment.

Arguably the biggest hindrance to the growth of hockey and the NHL is the lack of representation for any race other than white dudes. This tournament did nothing but illuminate that. The NHL is 90% white, 5% Black, and 5% other races. 100% of its marketable stars are white, and 100% of the players in this tournament were—say it with me now—white. For people of color, there’s next to no representation. Zero notable players look like them to idolize and follow. When the most popular non-white individual involved with hockey is P.K. Subban—someone who hasn’t been a relevant player in over seven years, with his only current contribution to the NHL through talk shows—then you have a problem. I’m in the firm camp that the vast majority of white people already know if they like hockey or not. Sports grow through branching out to people and communities who don’t regularly experience what they can bring to the table. The NHL’s approach addresses none of that, and the 4 Nations Face-Off provided zero solutions.

The benefit of international tournaments is that they can help expand the sport into new countries, particularly those not already deeply intertwined with American leagues. However, this tournament involved four nations with a strong hockey history. Reaching out to Finland and Sweden—where hockey is the most popular and second most popular sport, respectively—offers little opportunity for real growth. This is also my issue with the NHL's approach to overseas games. They’ve hosted matchups in Sweden, Czechia, and Finland—all countries with existing ties to the NHL. In contrast, the NFL targets countries like Brazil, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Ireland—nations without a deep history in American football, making them ripe for new market opportunities. Meanwhile, the NHL continues to focus on already saturated areas. A massive misstep in my opinion.

Finally, for whatever new fans were created, the NHL does not provide an easy and accessible viewing experience. On cable, people can only watch their local team. Even if a game is technically available on a certain channel, the vast majority are "blacked out" unless nationally broadcast—and that only applies to a select number of games. The NHL does this to entice people to pay for subscription services like Sportsnet Premium or ESPN+. Every sporting league has subscription services, but the NHL is the only one that specifically blocks people from watching games that are on cable TV outside of their region, and it just feels like they’re giving fans the proverbial middle finger. It’s hard to convince someone who wants to dip their toe into NHL fandom that it’s worth paying for an expensive subscription service—especially when they don’t even know if they love the sport yet.

Beyond that, the point of best-on-best tournaments is to showcase high-level talent to everyone. The idea is to grow the game by making people want to watch these stars regularly. However, for many fans, their local teams don’t have players who were showcased in this tournament. So if a new viewer became interested in a specific player, they would likely have to pay for a subscription just to follow them—which is an unrealistic expectation for casual or new fans.

Overall, the NHL struck gold with this tournament. There’s not a single aspect that could have gone any better. Sometimes, though, big moments don’t always translate into something greater. This tournament reached immense heights because it was an event—largely because we got to witness two nations, who, let’s just say, aren’t the most cordial right now, go head-to-head in a game that felt like it meant the world to everyone involved. However, the cultural factors that made it thrive aren’t relevant to the NHL. This event-like atmosphere simply can’t be replicated with what the league has to offer. Not only that, but this tournament didn’t address any of the deep-rooted issues that plague the NHL. It continues to cater almost exclusively to one group of people, and when attempting to expand, it focuses on areas that already have deep hockey roots. This tournament didn’t change that.

Yes, it was an amazing eight days, but people need to slow down and realize this wasn’t the game-changer for the NHL that they think it was.