-
Neil Paine
The 4 Nations Face-Off, which is a round-robin hockey tournament scheduled for Feb. 12-20 in Montreal and Boston, will boast an international field stacked with elite scorers, playmakers, shutdown defenders and elite goaltenders: Connor McDavid is on for Canada, as are Nathan MacKinnon and Connor Hellebuyck in net. The USA team boasts Auston Matthews and Quinn Hughes; Sweden has William Nylander and Linus Ullmark (if healthy); Finland is led by the likes of Sebastian Aho and Juuse Saros.
The tournament, which replaces the NHL’s typical All-Star Weekend, will feature rosters of NHL players from the United States, Canada, Sweden and Finland, all locked in a battle for bragging rights about which country has produced the best talent in the world.
But which player truly stands out as the most gifted among them?
Thanks to NHL EDGE tracking data, we can quantify factors such as the skating speed and shot power of every skater, among other attributes. Not only will those skills make a difference to the outcome of the tournament, but they’re also darned exciting to watch in action.
Here are the 4 Nations players, selected among the four rosters of 23 players each, who excel in the metrics that define hockey dominance this season.
More 4 Nations Face-Off coverage:
Pick Team USA’s lineup | See the jerseys
How to watch, schedule | Format, rules
Grading the rosters; snubs, surprises
Metrics of choice: Top speed and average skating speed at even strength
Click here to explore the full, interactive chart.
This is no cop-out: Hughes and McDavid are effectively tied in terms of rising toward the top-right hand side of our chart above. At even strength, Hughes cruises around the ice at an average speed of 10.83 mph, fifth highest in the league overall and the fastest of any player in the 4 Nations pool. It makes sense: When you watch Hughes play, he is always on the move, flitting about the ice in search of ways to set up scoring chances for himself and others.
But of course, not even Hughes (whose top speed is 23.33 mph) has a faster recorded speed than McDavid, who maxed out at 23.97 mph earlier this season. McDavid is the four-time winner of the fastest skater competition at the NHL All-Star Game, including at last year’s festivities in Toronto. The sight of either Hughes or McDavid bearing down on you is enough to put fear into any defenseman or goalie in the league, so it’s a toss-up who earns this title at the 4 Nations.
Sneaky fast: Finland’s Roope Hintz is a known speed-burner, but he doesn’t always get mentioned in the McDavid tier of skaters — he has never competed in the fastest skater competition, either, so we really only get to see him jet around when scoring highlight goals for the Dallas Stars. But he’s right next to McDavid and Hughes in our chart, as is 20-year-old Swedish phenom Leo Carlsson. Carlsson is still figuring out how to best use his combination of size and speed to produce in the box score, but he’s closer to McDavid, Hughes and Hintz than the next tier of skaters.
And then there are the outliers of the chart: Players such as USA defenseman Jaccob Slavin, who tops out at 24.19 mph — the fastest of any player at the 4 Nations — but has an average even-strength speed of only 8.3 mph — second slowest in the tournament. Defensemen in general tend to have lower average skating speeds, which hurts them in a comparison like this, but it also means we will likely get to see their engines at full burn only in rare moments.
0:59
Everything you need to know about the NHL 4 Nations Face-Off
Here is everything you need to know about the NHL 4 Nations Face-Off beginning on Feb. 12.
Metrics of choice: Hardest shot speed and average shot speed
Click here to explore the full, interactive chart.
It’s no surprise to see the 6-foot-7 Swedish captain, Victor Hedman, leading the way. Hedman won hardest shot honors at the 2022 All-Star skills competition, blasting a puck at 103.2 mph. He recorded a blistering 101.36 mph shot in the past season, his fastest in-game shot of the puck-tracking era. But where Hedman really shines is his consistent ability to put that booming shot to good use during the flow of play; he ranks seventh among all NHL players this season and No. 1 by far among 4 Nations players, with an average speed of 75.18 mph across all of his shots combined.
Some of that is because he is doing so much shooting from the perimeter, where power is king — he’s tied for 13th this season with 33 slap shot attempts, and nearly 70% of his shots have come from long range (shots in the offensive zone that are more than 43 feet from the goal). But when it comes to fearsome point shooters, few in the game are better than Hedman, who seems to have recovered from the down year he had a couple of seasons ago to once again rank among the league’s most productive D-men.
Boom-boom Swedes: Scan the upper right part of the plot above, and you’ll notice yellow dots (for Sweden) belonging not just to Hedman, but also to Gustav Forsling, Rasmus Dahlin and Mattias Ekholm. It’s fair to say that, in terms of pure shooting firepower, the Swedish blue line has no equal at this tournament — opponents will have to pick their poison between blocking these heavy shots or giving the defensemen too much space to operate.
The only real rival to the Swedes is Canada, who has a handful of booming blueliners (Colton Parayko, Cale Makar, Shea Theodore, Josh Morrissey and Devon Toews) who fill out the tier of shooters right below Hedman, Forsling and Dahlin.
Best Offensive Creator: Connor McDavid, Canada
Metrics of choice: Individual high-danger chances and assisted goals created per 60 minutes at 5-on-5.
Click here to explore the full, interactive chart.
In addition to being our co-fastest skater above, McDavid is also a predictable pick for the most dangerous offensive player in the 4 Nations Face-Off, between his scoring and passing abilities. His speed and agility on the open ice puts opponents on constant alert, creating untold havoc in the offensive zone and especially around the net. Among players with at least 400 minutes of ice time this season, McDavid ranks eighth overall in rebound chances created per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, a type of play that leads to a disproportionate amount of goals.
Between those flurries around the net and other situations where McDavid’s combination of skating and skill overwhelms the defense, 50% of McDavid’s shots have come in high-danger areas of the rink. And then there’s his passing. Heading into Tuesday, McDavid was tied with Sidney Crosby for 12th in the NHL in first assists per 60 minutes at 5-on-5.
The setup men and the sharpshooters: Overall, McDavid has a balanced profile as an offensive creator, scoring plenty — if not quite as much as a few years ago — even while his value is tilted more toward playmaking. The mirror image of that among the top players in the tournament is Auston Matthews of Team USA, who is roughly as effective but does it more by creating high-danger chances for himself than others.
A perhaps surprising name that strikes a balance between the two superstars is Canada’s Brandon Hagel, who is second to Matthews in individual high-danger chances while creating nearly 20% more assisted goals than his American counterpart. Then there are some interesting clusters of teammates at the extremes of the chart: Finns Hintz, Artturi Lehkonen and Erik Haula are among the players most tilted toward creating individual scoring chances rather setting up others, while Canada’s Sidney Crosby, Mitch Marner and Travis Konecny do much more of their damage as passers than shooters.
Metrics of choice: Goals Saved Above Average (GSAA) per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 for high-danger and all other chances.
Click here to explore the full, interactive chart.
The chart illustrates how comically dominant Hellebuyck has been this season, which has been the case pretty much every season since about 2017-18.
Over that span, Hellebuyck leads all NHL goalies with 171.9 total Goals Above Replacement, 36.4 GAR clear of No. 2 Andrei Vasilevskiy (Tampa Bay Lightning); that gap between the Winnipeg Jets star and the rest of the field would itself rank 25th on the list of most valuable netminders of the past eight years, if it belonged to another goalie. All of which is to say that Hellebuyck is by far the top goaltender in the 4 Nations Face-Off, and he will give the United States a chance to win it all if he plays at a level remotely approaching his potential.
What makes Hellebuyck so great? Certainly, it’s his ability to make spectacular saves on high-danger chances, robbing opposing scorers of what would otherwise be gimme goals. But an underrated aspect of his game is how he basically never allows goals on easier saves. While Hellebuyck “only” ranks second in GSAA (behind New York Islanders’ Ilya Sorokin) on high-danger chances over the past three seasons, he easily leads the league in GSAA on medium– and low-danger chances, a testament to his consistency and focus.
Best of the rest: So, if Hellebuyck is head and shoulders above the rest of his peers between the pipes, who else might be a difference-maker in this tournament? Another goalie to watch is Sweden’s Filip Gustavsson, who is solid on tough saves and (like Hellebuyck) is a paragon of focus on the more routine stops. Team USA backups Jake Oettinger and Jeremy Swayman also fit this category, as does fellow Swede Linus Ullmark.
Finland’s Juuse Saros is sort of the opposite — he has been shakier on less threatening chances — but maybe that gives him upside if he tightens up in the mental part of the game. Finally, it’s worth noting that Canada, for all of its speed and skill at forward and defense, has a fairly mediocre group in goal between Jordan Binnington, Adin Hill and Sam Montembeault. If the Canadians fall short here, it will probably be because the talent for stopping the puck wasn’t there.