Americans Who Don’t Even Watch Hockey Say They’re JACKED To Watch USA Face Canada In The 4 Nations Championship

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Brady Tkachuk

It’s USA versus Canada for all of the marbles… that we just learned about a couple of days ago.

To call the NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off a success would be an understatement. It’s transcended into its very own cultural moment. The league has managed to create a seismic event, pitting the United States, Canada, Finland and Sweden against one another in a round-robin tournament that replaced this year’s NHL All Star event.

They’d be dumb not to permanently replace the All-Star break with the 4 Nations Face-Off, or at the very least, something like it.

Why? Because casual sports fans are now flocking to watch the championship game between USA and Canada. Hockey fans – and those who are just proud to be an American – are looking forward to the matchup that should feature a lot of heart, grit… and fist fighting.

USA and Canada wasted no time getting to the fighting when they played their first game against one another in the round robin tournament. There were three separate fights in the first 9 seconds of the contest. When the puck dropped, Matthew and his brother Brady Tkachuk (along with veteran forward JT Miller) dropped gloves before things even really got going, and it was quite possibly the best thing that’s ever happened in sports. There might be some recency bias in play there, but it certainly felt that way in the moment.

It’s honestly how I wish every hockey game would get started:

Hell yes (I’ve watched that video over 100 times in the past couple of days).

The best part about the 4 Nations competition is that it’s grown the sport of hockey, and it’s completely blown the NBA All-Star break out of the water if that matters to anyone reading this. And the hilarious part is that if you would have asked sports fans and random Americans about the 4 Nations Face-Off a month ago, they would have had no idea what you were talking about.

Now, as JJ Watt so beautifully put it, hockey fans and non-hockey fans alike are tuning in:

“It’s just incredible how much of a home run 4 Nations has been for the NHL and hockey in general. Friends who never watched a hockey game in their lives reaching out asking what the plan is for tonight’s game, what food we’re ordering, etc. Definition of growing the game.”

Though I stay up to date with the NHL, I fit into that “texting the group to see where we are watching the hockey” category.

All in all, it’s beautiful to see hockey shining in the spotlight with the 4 Nations Face-Off, even if it’s just something that the NHL just cooked up early in 2024. It’s certainly been helped a bit by the recent, growing rivalry between Canada and the USA (shout out Donald Trump), and it all culminates with the championship game.

And the memes about the event this has become are glorious:

Many Americans are likely saying that exact same thing… USA! USA! USA!

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