The NHL's 4 Nations Face-Off has been a resounding success. Commissioner Gary Bettman somehow managed to organize a competition that beat his own league's previous 64 Stanley Cup Final game ratings and popped the NBA's All-Star Weekend hype bubble.
Chief among those achievements was the wild success of the Team USA vs. Team Canada round-robin game, in which the Stars and Stripes took home a 3-1 upset victory. The two heated rivals (they fight a lot if you didn't know) will play Thursday in a rematch, but this time for the tournament championship.
Team USA's upset in the round-robin was the first such win over the Maple Leaf since the group stage of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Thursday's grudge match will be the latest edition in an actually lopsided all-time rivalry.
Who leads in the all-time USA vs. Canada best-on-best series?
Thursday will be the 21st meeting between the Americans and Canadians in an NHL-sanctioned, best-on-best international tournament (Canada Cup, World Cup of Hockey and Olympics). Canada leads the all-time series 14-5-1 but it had been nine years since the two countries' elite squared off on Saturday.
With Thursday's final set for 8pm ET at TD Garden in Boston, it will be the first time since the 2002 Winter Olympic gold medal match in Salt Lake City that the two sides will battle in a tournament final on American soil.
Can Team USA create their own Miracle moment in 2025? 🏒@emilymkaplan gives a status check ahead of USA vs. Canada in the 4 Nations Face-Off Championship 🇺🇸🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/Ij3FkBLQDW
— ESPN (@espn) February 19, 2025
Fans may notice some big names missing from the lineups, however, like U.S. defenseman Charlie McAvoy. Vancouver Canucks star Quinn Hughes was thought to be available to potentially replace him in the final but that is no longer the case. Instead, Team USA will be bringing in the Buffalo Sabres' Tage Thompson and the New Jersey Devils' Brett Pesce as emergency options.
While Canada isn't the 1984 Soviet Union, the U.S. hasn't beaten it in a tournament final since the 1996 World Cup of Hockey. So, there's still some element of needing a miracle on Thursday night to pull off the team's first best-on-best title since then.