If there was any doubt about whether the players at the 4 Nations Face-Off would be competing hard, it was immediately erased by the first hit of the game.
There might have been some question over whether the stars of the NHL would treat this midseason tournament like the All-Star Game and simply play some semi-competitive shinny for a couple of weeks before getting back to their club teams and the chase for the Stanley Cup. Then Canada’s Nathan MacKinnon hammered Sweden’s Jonas Brodin hard into the endboards 23 seconds into the game.
This was no easygoing, we-all-have-work-in-the-morning game. There was national pride on the line, as none of the players took wearing their countries’ colours lightly.
Then, less than a minute into the game, the NHL got the dream moment they were hoping for when they decided to organize this tournament: MacKinnon, Sidney Crosby, and Connor McDavid combining on a gorgeous tic-tac-toe goal.
The three biggest stars in Canadian hockey made it look easy. McDavid, quarterbacking from the right half-boards, sent the puck down to Crosby and he made a ridiculous spinning backhand pass under a sliding Mathias Ekholm to MacKinnon for a wide-open net.
It was one of three assists for the 37-year-old Crosby, who was the best player in the game despite sharing the ice with a cavalcade of Canadian greats and Swedish stars, all of whom are younger than “The Kid.”
Sweden battled back to tie Canada
Through the first twenty minutes, it looked like the Crosby-led Canadians were simply too much for Sweden, who couldn’t get anywhere near the Canadian net and didn’t get credit for their first shot on goal until over 17 minutes into the game. By that point, it was already 2-0 Canada after Brayden Point set up Brad Marchand on a 2-on-1 rush.
Sweden pushed back hard in the second and third period, however. Shot attempts were 48-to-27 for Sweden in the second and third periods and shots on goal were 19-to-13. Brodin was the first to find a hole in Canadian goaltender Jordan Binnington, whizzing a shot past his ear to get Sweden on the board midway through the second period.
Crosby helped restore the two-goal lead before the end of the middle frame, however, attacking against the flow of play. One-time Canucks prospect Gustav Forsling contained a Crosby rush but he simply found the trailer, Mark Stone, for the 3-1 goal.
Sweden wouldn’t surrender, however, with goaltending making a major difference. Filip Gustavsson came up with save after save in the Swedish net to keep them in the game, while Binnington got beat from distance by Adrian Kempe to pull Sweden within one.
Then Sweden came up with a tic-tac-toe goal of their own to tie the game midway through the third. After an icing call, Joel Eriksson Ek won the faceoff and Lukas Raymond sent the puck to Jesper Bratt in a prime shooting position. As Binnington sold out to the shot, however, Bratt sent a backdoor pass to Eriksson Ek, who calmly lifted the puck over Binnington’s outstretched glove.
After the tying goal, Gustavsson came up with the save of the game on Devon Toews to ensure the game got to overtime.
It was some incredible lateral movement by Gustavsson, as he came across to his left on a cross-seam pass from Mitch Marner to McDavid, then halted his momentum on the one-touch pass to Toews, stretching out his blocker to rob the Canadian defenceman.
Crosby and Marner combine in overtime
The game went to overtime, where Canada carried the flow of play, forcing Gustavsson to make several more big stops. Canada also got away with having too many men on the ice at one point, as Brandon Hagel jumped off the bench to pick off a breakaway pass to William Nylander before Nathan MacKinnon stepped off the ice.
In any case, it all culminated in one more smart play by Crosby.
All alone as he entered the offensive zone with three Swedes closing in, Crosby sent a drop pass into the neutral zone, allowing Marner to attack the blue line with speed. Backed into the zone, Erik Karlsson couldn’t maintain a tight gap, giving Marner just enough room to rip a wrist shot past Gustavsson’s blocker.
Canada’s win gives them two points in the standings of the round-robin phase of the tournament.
It also is another win in an incredible streak for Crosby, as Team Canada has now won 26 straight games with Crosby in the lineup in international competition, dating back to the 2010 Olympics.
Sidney Crosby has averaged 1.12 points per game during his 26-game win streak when wearing a Team Canada sweater pic.twitter.com/XVIMEFcptc
— Sportsnet Stats (@SNstats) February 13, 2025
Sweden gets one point for the overtime loss. All of that is typical for the NHL but the tournament rules, like in IIHF-sanctioned competition, give three points for a regulation win, so Sweden pushing the game to overtime could have consequences for the final standings and which team moves on to the championship game.
Pettersson defended hard but lacked offensive spark
From a Canucks perspective, it was a quiet night for Elias Pettersson, as it was for most of the Swedish lineup in the tightly contested game. As exciting as the game was, both teams played some defensively sound hockey and the shots in regulation finished 22-to-20 in favour of Sweden — by definition, a low-event game.
Pettersson had one shot on goal in just 16:32 of ice time, as his line with Filip Forsberg and Adrian Kempe didn’t get used as much as might have been expected and Pettersson wasn’t on Sweden’s first power play unit.
In the third period, however, Sweden’s head coach Sam Hallam loaded up a line with Nylander, Pettersson, and Forsberg, so it will be interesting to see if that’s a line he returns to in Sweden’s next game.
Pettersson made some sound defensive plays throughout the game but Canucks fans are obviously hoping that the tournament does more for his confidence in the offensive zone. In that regard, the prayers of Canucks fans went unanswered.
The moment that stood out for Pettersson was when he swooped in to steal a puck from Cale Makar and broke out in transition for a 2-on-1. The defensive play was top-notch; the execution on the 2-on-1 was lacking.
In Pettersson’s defence, he was at the end of a shift, Forsberg drove to the inside post rather than the far post so didn’t give Pettersson a passing option, and Makar backchecked hard to make it difficult to get a shot off. An argument can be made that Pettersson made the safest play to pull up and feed Erik Karlsson at the point.
But there was a time when Pettersson would have made something of that moment — he would have made the rock star play rather than the safe play — and Canucks fans would love to see that Pettersson back in action.
