Jason LaRose
GAME NOTES: CANADA VS. UNITED STATES (FEB. 15)
While every preliminary-round game is important in a short tournament, this one just seems a little more special – Canada takes on the United States in the marquee prelim matchup on Saturday night at the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off.
Last Game
Canada opened the tournament with an absolute barn-burner on Wednesday night, getting an overtime winner from Mitch Marner to earn a 4-3 victory over Sweden in front of a raucous crowd at the Bell Centre. Sidney Crosby picked up three primary assists (and improved to 26-0 in his last 26 international games), while Nathan MacKinnon, Brad Marchand and Mark Stone joined Marner as goal scorers.
The Americans turned it on late in their opener against Finland on Thursday, scoring four goals in a span of 5:56 across the second and third periods to beat the Finns 6-1. Brady and Matthew Tkachuk scored two goals each, with Matthew and Jake Guentzel netting 11 seconds apart in the opening minute of the final frame to extend the U.S. lead from one to three before most fans were back in their seats.
Last Meeting
The Canadians and Americans last clashed in the semifinals at the 2021 IIHF World Championship in Riga, Latvia. Darcy Kuemper starred between the pipes for Canada, making 36 saves, Andrew Mangiapane scored a pair of goals to bolster his case for MVP honours and the Canadians – who started the tournament with three-straight losses – downed their cross-border rivals 4-2 en route to an unlikely 27th world title.
The most recent best-on-best matchup came in the semifinals of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games, a narrow 1-0 win for Canada. Jamie Benn scored the game’s only goal 1:41 into the second period and Carey Price made it stand up with a 31-save shutout, backstopping Canada into another Olympic gold medal game (where he’d add another clean sheet in a 3-0 win over Sweden).
What to Watch
The exploits of Canada’s big guns up front have been well-documented, so let’s turn our attention to the blue line. The loss of Shea Theodore for the tournament with an upper-body injury has opened the door for Travis Sanheim, who will draw into the lineup against the U.S. But the native of Elkhorn, Manitoba (the smallest hometown on the Canadian roster with just 455 residents, according to the 2021 Census) is not your average seventh defenceman. Sanheim plays 24:34 a night with the Philadelphia Flyers, 14th among NHL defencemen, sits seventh among all NHLers with 126 blocked shots and is fast – which comes in handy in a tournament like this. NHL Edge data has the 28-year-old in the 97th percentile among defencemen with 93 bursts above the league average of 32 kph.
The Tkachuk brothers are continuing the proud familiy tradition of international excellence started by their father, Keith. The elder Tkachuk represented the U.S. at two World Juniors (1991, 1992), two World Cups (1996, 2004) and four Olympics (1992, 1998, 2002, 2006), winning a World Cup title in 1996 and Olympic silver in 2002. Now Brady and Matthew are getting their first taste of best-on-best competition, having already accumulated 36 games of Team USA experience at the U18 Men’s Worlds, World Juniors and Men’s Worlds. And watch out for Zach Werenski; the blue-liner – who recorded three assists against the Finns – is enjoying a career year for the Columbus Blue Jackets, ranking second among NHL rearguards in goals (17) and points (59) while playing a league-leading 26:53 per game.
A Look Back
One of international hockey’s greatest rivalries, the Canadians and Americans have met 19 times in best-on-best tournaments since the 1976 Canada Cup, with Canada holding a 14-4-1 advantage.
A number of those meetings have come in tournament finales; Canada swept the best-of-three final in the 1991 Canada Cup, only for the U.S. to get that win back in a three-game thriller in the 1996 World Cup of Hockey. And, of course, the North American rivals have met in a pair of Olympic gold medal games – in 2002, when Canada ended a 50-year drought, and the 2010 instant classic in Vancouver that ended with Crosby’s iconic Golden Goal.
All-time record: Canada leads 14-4-1 (2-0 in OT) Canada goals: 70 United States goals: 29