Idea for a New "4 Nations" Concept

Referring to the NHL 4 Nations Tournament as a "best-on-best" competition is misleading because it excludes elite players from countries like Russia, Czechia, Switzerland, and Germany. Some of the world’s top talents, Leon Draisaitl, Nikita Kucherov, Kirill Kaprizov, and David Pastrňák, are left out, disqualifying it as a true representation of the best talent in the game.

Best-on-Best-on-Who?

This tournament has been a massively successful made-for-TV event, replacing the All-Star Game with something more competitive. However, it cannot claim to be a legitimate international best-on-best showcase. The NHL structured it to keep things simple, limiting the number of teams and ensuring all players come from NHL rosters. Still, the reality is that international hockey is bigger than just four countries.

To create a true best-on-best tournament outside of the Olympics, the NHL would need to expand the field to include all major hockey nations. The World Cup of Hockey (returning in 2028) will have a broader field, but its execution is fundamentally flawed if it continues to force countries with only a handful of elite players to ice full rosters against stacked powerhouses like Canada and the U.S.

Depth or Death

Germany, for example, has Draisaitl, Stützle, and Seider, but beyond that, their depth drops off significantly. Even if players like Peterka and Grubauer are included, the rest of the lineup would likely be filled with DEL players or marginal NHLers. That creates a significant talent gap when compared to a Canadian roster, which could realistically have 75% of its 23 selections be NHL first-line caliber talents. The same problem applies to Switzerland: Josi, Hischier, and Meier are great, but the supporting cast isn’t anywhere near the level of their opponents. These teams would be overmatched in almost every game, not because they lack talent, but because their elite players don’t have an equivalent supporting cast like the Big Four do.

Czechia is somewhat better off, as they can field a more NHL-heavy team, but even they would struggle to compete over an entire tournament. The problem is that in a true best-on-best format, elite talent is important, but depth is what ultimately wins. Germany can send out Draisaitl for 30 minutes a night, but in the other half, they’ll be rolling out DEL-level players against the NHL All-Stars from Canada or the U.S., and the mismatch becomes obvious.

Team Europe worked in 2016. Instead of forcing players like Draisaitl and Josi to carry subpar rosters, they were surrounded by other elite players from non-traditional hockey countries. It made the games far more competitive and gave elite players a real chance to play meaningful hockey, rather than simply trying to survive.

The World Cup is technically “solving” the issue of missing players, but it misses the bigger picture. There’s a difference between including elite players and ensuring the tournament is structured in a way that fosters real competition. The 4 Nations was a massive success, and the same can be said about the 2028 World Cup, as long as serious moves are made to maximize true best-on-best hockey.

Fix the Format

At one point, a North America vs. Europe format was used in the 1979 Challenge Cup, where a team of NHL All-Stars played a three-game series against the Soviet Union. This concept could work well now. Unlike the 4 Nations format, this ensures that every elite NHL player is eligible, regardless of nationality. Historically, Canada and the U.S. have had more depth than Europe as a whole, but today’s NHL shows that top European players can absolutely match up. This is probably the simplest way to execute it while still capturing the highest level of international hockey.

This naturally opens the door for another long-overdue possibility: an exclusive USA vs. Canada showdown. No rivalry in hockey carries more weight than these two nations going head-to-head. While the Olympics and past World Cups have provided glimpses of this matchup on the biggest stage, the opportunity to build a full-fledged best-of-three or best-of-five series between these two powerhouses would stand alone as a highly anticipated, separate event.

A secondary suggestion to ensure a best-on-best tournament would involve reworking the 4 Nations format. First, replace one of the nations with “Team Europe,” essentially an all-star squad made up of the best players from countries whose national teams did not make the tournament. Then, after each tournament, the worst-performing of the three invited nations (based on standings or a tiebreaker) would be relegated and replaced by a new nation for the next edition.

In practical terms, an example could involve Canada, the U.S., and Sweden being invited, with the remaining top European players forming Team Europe. This solves the biggest issue with the current Four Nations format, and by adding relegation, you prevent the tournament from becoming stagnant. Even if a team isn’t in contention for the final, they still have to fight to avoid finishing last and losing their spot in the next tournament.

The process could be straightforward. After the round-robin phase, the standings would determine not only which teams advance to the championship game but also which team is relegated. The lowest-placed national team among the three invited participants would be replaced by the next best-ranked hockey nation based on NHL-selected criteria.

Since it’s an NHL tournament, one suggestion would be to use an objective metric like total points scored by NHL players, broken down by nationality. This system would reward countries that develop strong talent pipelines while ensuring no team coasts on reputation alone.

This would also create a fascinating dynamic for Team Europe: since they aren’t a traditional nation, they wouldn’t be subject to relegation, making them a constant presence in the tournament. This could turn them into either a dominant force or a perennial underdog, depending on how their roster is structured each year. Fans would have a completely new type of team to root for, one that represents global talent rather than a single country, and one that could realistically win the tournament year after year.

The current 4 Nations setup was a massive step up from the All-Star Game, but it falls short of being a legitimate international event due to its exclusionary nature. Adding a “Team Europe” and implementing relegation would fix these issues while maintaining a streamlined, easy-to-follow format. It also adds the kind of unpredictability that makes sports exciting.

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