– Boston, MA
In a professional sports landscape where every league in the United States’ four most popular sports has gone back to the drawing board in recent years, it appears that only the National Hockey League has found a winning formula.
Thursday night in Boston, NHL players bearing the insignias of either the USA or Canada (depending on their nation of origin) will square off to do battle for global supremacy – at least of the ice arena.
It began Saturday, February 15, with four nations – USA, Canada, Sweden and Finland (Russia is disqualified from all international competition due it the current conflict with Ukraine) – facing off in a round-robin style tournament. At the end of the day, the US, sporting a record of 2-0-0, and Canada, at 1-1-1 emerged as the top two teams setting up showdown of the North American neighbors on Thursday.
The matches last Saturday brought some unexpected, but much appreciated fervor by the players, heralding an intensity that will undoubtedly carry over into the final. Nine seconds into the first match between the US and Canada, three fights broke out, including the bellwether brawl between the US’s Matthew Tkachuk and Canada’s Brandon Hagel.
The fights certainly painted the picture for fans, critics and media alike that this was not going to be some lifeless exhibition. They served notice to the sporting community that these games mattered for reasons bigger than the NHL standings.
There is at least a case to be made that what the NHL’s inaugural 4-Nations Face-Off awoke in its players and fans was a deep-seated national pride, that for at least one year, the winner of the tournament boasts the world’s most elite hockey players.
Some may dispute the idea that civic pride played any role in the fisticuffs last Saturday, but consider the body of evidence. The game, being held in Montreal, Canada, squared up nations that have been embroiled in weeks of jabs and threat of tariffs between President Donald Trump and PM Justin Trudeau.
Team USA's 4 Nations GM talks 'political flare' to fight in game vs Canada, sends message to Trump https://t.co/kJoqLy3mvn
— Fox News Sports (@FoxNewsSports_) February 17, 2025
More immediately, as is custom during the NHL regular season, both the American and Canadian national anthems were played; and during the American Star Spangled Banner, in the midst of a Canadian-dominated crowd, a chorus of boos poured out of the stands. Not just as the song began, but throughout. The vitriol seemed to actually intensify as the song neared its crescendo.
The rest is up to interpretation, but one has to at least entertain the idea that Tkachuk’s fists were thrown with the burning love of his homeland stirred into action. Team USA did not leave it’s fight there with nine-seconds expended on the three-period marathon, but went on to win 3-1, besting team Canada for the first time in years.
More than the play itself – which has garnered international attention and promises to captivate even the most ambivalent of sports fans for one night this week – the NHL seems to have captured lightning in a bottle and done what the other major sports leagues in professional baseball, football and basketball have not for decades: garner greater interest in their mid-season exhibition.
All-star games have been a mainstay in major professional sports for at least the last 50 years, with baseball’s mid-season classic going the furthest back, to 1933. But much of the rhetoric around these exhibition games in the last two-decades or so, is that they are tired, played out, and husks of their former glory.
Whether because of rising salaries, longer seasons, or a general shift in motivations, players have increasingly made themselves unavailable for their sport’s all star games, or simply played at half-speed. And fans have taken notice.
Another sport sent out it’s supposed best last weekend as well, but the NBA’s offering may have been a pickup game at the local YMCA for all the buzz it managed to generate, which is to say, not much.
The 4.7 million viewers tallied for All-Star weekend was a 13% drop from 2024 and marks the second lowest ratings ever for an NBA All-Star game. And that was after revamping the game itself into a four-team tournament made up of school-yard style pick-em by four honorary captains.
The NBA All-Star Game introduced a new format—but it wasn’t enough to entice viewers to tune in.
— Front Office Sports (@FOS) February 19, 2025
The midseason showcase averaged 4.7 million viewers across TNT platforms, down 13% compared to last year.
More ⬇️https://t.co/QXH7mXqkRb
This latest change to the usual fare of 150-plus-point scoring and disinterested players standing around the three-point line, landed with a resounding thud. But the NBA has been unable to find the right formula since the Bird-Jordan-Magic days of the late-80’s - early-90’s.
They are hardly alone. The NFL has all but given up on its annual exhibition. After taking it out of Hawaii and moving it to the weekend before the Super Bowl instead of the week following – moves that barely moved the national interest needle – the NFL seemingly washed its hands, turning the Pro Bowl into a skills competition and a flag-football contest that piqued the interest of practically no one. The 4.7 million viewers matched the NBA’s game and was the lowest ever for pro-football’s annual exhibition.
Major League Baseball has been the only league to leave it’s game largely untouched, still maintaining a nine-inning duel between the National and American League all stars. In the early 2000’s, MLB attached home-field advantage in the World Series to generate more player interest, but the results have been uneven to middling. Though a bright spot came in 2024 with the third time averaging more than 7.5 million in the last ten years.
The NHL, perhaps borrowing from baseball’s World Baseball Classic (itself a spin on the World Cup Soccer tournament that takes place every four years), is the only league in the nation to capitalize on something that goes deeper than player or even team rooting interests.
They brought civic pride to the forefront this year and the results are astounding. Part 1 of the USA - Canada battle drew more than 10.1 million viewers, making it the most watched non-Stanley Cup Final game since 2014.
The rematch set for Thursday night is geared to be even bigger when you add the hockey-specific storyline of Canada seeking to avenge its first loss to the US since the 2010 Olympics (also its last loss in international play, period). But for the non-hockey fan, the casual sports fan, and the common citizen, Thursday’s game has immense draw that is otherwise missing from these exhibition games.
The rematch will be held in Boston, MA, home ice for the Americans, and many in attendance will likely not forget the boos that met their beloved Anthem. Nor will they forget the drubbing their boys laid on their neighbors to the north. For the Canadian faithful, this is a chance to recapture lost glory and the long-held belief that hockey supremacy belongs in Canada.
And for those tuning in, it promises to be a battle for the ages, and a reason to wave the flag. Not for the Olympic Community that sold out to wokeness as demonstrated in 2024, nor for die-hard hockey fans, but for people who love their land.
