BOSTON — In the end, after more than a week of hockey that redefined how a professional league can imagine an all-star competition, there was Connor McDavid, the Canadian star, alone in front of the American net.
Related: Connor McDavid cannot be left alone in front of any net, anywhere, at any time.
“It’s high stakes,” McDavid said later, speaking into the camera for ESPN’s “SportsCenter.”
Here, then, was hockey, in the middle of a paused NHL season, grabbing the national sporting discourse by the throat. Sorry, make that the sporting discourse in four nations.
The puck came to McDavid’s stick just more than eight minutes into the first overtime period of the championship game of something called the 4 Nations Face-off — a competition most Americans likely didn’t know existed two weeks ago, one that didn’t exist two years ago, one that enthralled millions in its first iteration.
McDavid is a three-time Hart Trophy winner as the NHL’s MVP with the Edmonton Oilers. Was this puck he fired past American goalie Connor Hellebuyck for a 3-2 victory bigger than any of the 357 he had scored in his regular ol’ day job?
The gloves flung to the rafters at TD Garden, the hugs in the corner, the crumpled-to-the-ice Americans indicate it was up there.
What a game. What a tournament. What a concept.
“I think a lot of people were wondering what this tournament would mean to guys,” McDavid said. “Obviously, you can see what it means to everyone on our side.”
This was an exhibition, even a fabrication. The NHL flat-out nailed it. When the 4 Nations Face-off was announced during the NHL’s all-star break a year ago — at the same time when the league outlined plans to put its players back in the Winter Olympics, beginning next year in Milan — it seemed contrived.
“I think there were a lot of questions going into it,” Canadian captain Sidney Crosby said. “What was it going to feel like? Was it going to be an all-star game? What was the level going to be like as far as how are players viewing it?
“And I think that got answered pretty quickly the first night [for Canada] against Sweden. You saw the passion, and then it just continued to build and build. And you saw the attention and how much it meant to people. And obviously in Canada we have a lot of pride with being Canadian, but also for hockey as well. I think our group felt that.”
That’s what this entire endeavor was about: Feeling the competition. Not for cash or historic trophies. But just for pure competition’s sake, with Canada and USA — and Finland (technically “Suomi”), and Sweden (technically the Tre Kronor logo) — stitched onto the fronts of the sweaters.
“It was an honor to wear this jersey,” American captain Auston Matthews said, “and represent your country.”
So here it was: Elite players who make millions of dollars reduced to pond-hockey scrappers, just because someone told them it was for their country. Injured and sick players didn’t want to bow out. They clawed to get back. (Check in with their NHL teams after the “break” to see whether that was a wise idea.)
There was, too, a political overtone to it all. No, Team USA’s Matthew Tkachuk didn’t fight Canada’s Brandon Hagel to open a mesmerizing first matchup between the teams on Saturday in Montreal because he was defending President Trump’s tariffs on Canada. Nor did Tkachuk’s brother Brady take on Sam Bennett because he believed in Trump’s digs at Canada as America’s “51st state.”
But the rivalry felt both revitalized and real.
“It felt like there was a lot of tension,” Crosby said.
Because there was. The booing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” days earlier in Montreal was real, as was the jawing between the two fan bases here as they made their way into the Garden. Thankfully, the exchange of anthems went off mostly without a hitch — “O! Canada” was met with a murmur of jeers, but by the end, the Canadian fans in attendance sang it full-throated and uninhibited.
The Americans in attendance — and they were the clear majority — followed by all but drowning out Isabel Leonard and the Boston Pops. That alone might have been worth the $1,200 or so even the worst seats were going for on the secondary market.
The environment reflected how the entire event played out.
“I’ve never had so much fun over two weeks,” Team USA defenseman Zach Werenski said.
So why not extend the fun? The teams entered the third tied at 2-2. The tension was heightened. Not until Hellebuyck gloved a wrister from a charging Cale Makar with 5.6 seconds remaining did the Garden exhale.
The extra session wouldn’t be some tricked-up three-on-three skills competition that led to a shootout. No, this is a real hockey championship, so it would be decided in the only way real hockey championships can: five-on-five play, with 20-minute periods, until someone scored.
Jordan Binnington, the Canadian goalie who was treated like Hellebuyck’s inferior, made sure that wouldn’t be Team USA. He stopped Matthews, then Brady Tkachuk, then Matthews twice more.
“I don’t think I have enough words, to be honest with you,” Crosby said of Binnington.
Finally, then, the play that decided it. In this scenario — the United States and Canada, overtime for everything in a charged environment — it was impossible not to think of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. In that gold medal game, a puck went into the corner, and Canadian winger Jarome Iginla — by now, a Hall of Famer — tracked it down. Crosby called for it. Iginla fed him. Crosby buried the goal that rang through the nation, maybe the most important goal in the history of a country in which hockey is damn near religion.
Thursday came another puck in the corner. This time, it was Mitch Marner to fish it out. Matthews could have defended the slot. Instead, he drifted toward Marner. That left McDavid open. Here came the feed.
“The second he got it,” Makar said, “I was like, ‘Yep. There you go.’”
That it was McDavid, playing on a team that Crosby still drives, was some sort of hockey serendipity.
“He’s got a ton of pressure on him,” Crosby said. “ … Does so much for his team, for the league. There’s a lot of expectations. If anyone can relate to that, I think it’s me.”
Crosby is 37. McDavid is 28. They now have analogous goals, overtime tallies that rang throughout a country.
Except …
“He’s doing it at the Olympics,” McDavid said. “And this is just kind of a little tournament.”
A little tournament that seized the sporting world when no one expected it to. Yes, it sets up the 2026 Olympics, the first in a dozen years in which the NHL will send its best.
But in the wake of McDavid’s goal, it’s important to appreciate the 4 Nations Face-off for what it was: competition for competition’s sake, with dashes of patriotism and jingoism mixed in. Sell out your body, spill out your guts, for a previously unknown tournament in the middle of a grinding, 82-game regular season? Abso-freaking-lutely.
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