MONTREAL — It’s been close to a nine-year wait for Nathan MacKinnon, who last played best-on-best hockey for Team North America at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, with Jon Cooper behind the bench, in an overtime game against Team Sweden.
MacKinnon had just turned 21 and scored a spectacular game-winning goal to cap what has become a legendary overtime period in that game. At the time, he probably thought this would be a regular experience for him, going up against the best in the world and thriving like he did throughout that tournament on a made-up under-23 team. Except, the next time, he would be representing Canada instead.
MacKinnon is now 29, and he finally got to have that second experience of best-on-best hockey, with Cooper behind the bench against Team Sweden, and took 56 seconds to get on the scoresheet against them again.
“A lot of nerves, honestly,” MacKinnon said after Canada’s 4-3 overtime win to open the 4 Nations Face-Off. “I haven’t played best-on-best for Team Canada ever. So definitely a lot of adrenaline, a lot of nerves. So it was nice to get an open net early. It really settled me in.”
The 4 Nations Face-Off has been written off by some as a made-up tournament, not a true best-on-best because Russia is not included, because Czechia and Slovakia aren’t included, because NHL superstars like Leon Draisaitl and Nikita Kucherov — two of the NHL’s top three scorers — aren’t here.
But despite those imperfections, the players who took part in the closest thing we have seen to best-on-best hockey since 2016 were happy to be back in this kind of elite environment.
“I think everybody enjoyed it out there,” said Sweden defenseman Erik Karlsson, who also played in that game against MacKinnon and Team North America in 2016. “It’s obviously not very fun to lose, being as close as we were. But I think everyone should be proud of themselves. We played a hell of a game in here, and so did they on the other side.
“I think it was a very, very fun game to play. It was very fast.”
Of course, there are several players who were not involved in the tournament in 2016 who got their first taste of what best-on-best hockey looks like — players such as Cale Makar who are made for this kind of competition. But Makar said it took him some time to adjust to the pace.
“Not a lot of time and space out there, and a very fast pace and learning curve. The less time you have, you’ve got to make plays quicker. That’s the learning curve,” Makar said. “It’s a best-on-best; everybody wants to win. That’s why we’re here. We asked for this. It was really fun tonight.”
Connor McDavid, a teammate of MacKinnon’s on Team North America in 2016 at age 19, was also playing his first best-on-best game for Canada and did not disappoint. The high-flying combo he formed with MacKinnon for two shifts in overtime was something hockey fans have wanted to see for a long time.
“It was everything I would have expected, and maybe a little bit more,” McDavid said. “To play it here in Montreal, the fans, get off to a great start like that, it was really, really fun. To win in overtime obviously is great. To get a win is really big in this tournament; it’s a short tournament.
“It was everything I could have hoped for.”
With the NHL and NHL Players’ Association announcing before the game that a more permanent international calendar is close to completion and we will have best-on-best hockey every two years for the foreseeable future, Wednesday night’s game was a first taste of what should be a regular diet of this level of competition.
It was an excellent appetizer.
(Photo of Connor McDavid skating against Team Sweden: Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
