Are we at Crease not proud Americans who can easily root for Canada if we’re out early due to familial dual citizenship? Do we not care about expressing the least controversial form of periodically accepted nationalism? Do we not want bragging rights for a minimum of the next 6 years if we take it all in February? Wait, why are there only four nations?

Sure, when the puck drops at either of these tournaments we’ll certainly want to see our countrymen and women play well and win it all, but it really doesn’t feel like there are real stakes here, nothing to really sink our teeth into when thinking ahead to these rare events that, historically, are usually awesome. Trust me, we’re not trying to come from a negative place but any attention we’ve seen, at least as we write this in November 2024 is mostly a bunch of crappy listacles of who might be left off a country’s roster. 

At an age when I remember being in the most pure and credulous phase of hockey fanaticism, we were blessed with this new global showdown known as The World Cup of Hockey that was conveniently played in North American time zones and tailored for its fans. It was different from the Olympics because it was played during the offseason, and with NHL-sized rinks and NHL rules. It felt a little more badass for some reason. During the summer of 1996, I was going into my third year of youth hockey and I was into it — NHL games weren’t broadcasted with such abundance as we have now, especially not here in Southern California so this was really exciting. Unfortunately, at that time I didn’t have cable so most of my consumption of this tournament was asking my dad, who knew how to interpret the sports section better than my nine-year-old self, which club was in the lead. USA was undefeated. I ended up at a teammate’s house to catch the final on what was then known as Prime Sports, the local cable network with Kings legend Jimmy Fox breaking it down for us. All I really remember was a beastly Brett Hull and that our team had won. USA was the best at hockey for that moment and no one across the border commenting on Instagram could cite some stats to argue why that wasn’t really the case and one tournament doesn’t make that conclusion. Ah, take me back, it kind of sucks here.

The following World Cups were pretty sick too, each with their own interesting storylines. In 2004, it would be an entire year before we saw any NHL guys play again due to the lockout that took place and was announced two days after the tournament ended. And in 2016 we had the two merged teams of Team Europe, with players from all the less-represented countries in Europe, and the young guns of the North American squad that featured all the under-23-year-olds in Canada and the USA playing together. Canada ended up with gold in both but they hardly ran away with either. The most recent tourney also gave us the honestly insane-looking trophy made by the legendary architect and designer Frank Gehry, who has as much love for the game of hockey as anyone, but let’s face it that thing is at least a little bizarre, and at most a completely unhinged design. Speaking of Gehry we may have something cooking up with his people involved in an upcoming issue, the guy is truly amazing despite this thing and it’s sequel.

Mario and Gehry's trophy at the 2004 World Cup of Hockey.

Since I spent some time harping on the past limitations of viewing hockey due to a much smaller scale of media distribution, could we point to this as the cause for our utter lack of enthusiasm about what should realistically be some very good hockey played at events outside the Stanley Cup? Are we too inundated with information about every player in every nation? We even know who the next crop of players from these nations is because of the length of scouting reports we get and are written about almost daily. Will there be that wildcard who takes advantage of his shot and just drags his country to a medal — à la Saku Koivu in the ‘95 Worlds? 

As a publisher based in hockey, perhaps we are the ones inundated with too much information — slamming numbers from varying data points like a fiend. Putting together these stories always forces us to juggle countless thoughts and threads. Either way, we are really trying to get excited about the Four Nations Face-Off and we’re definitely not trying to yell at clouds, but any news we’ve read so far has landed with a thud. OR, maybe when the rosters are announced next week we’ll be hitting up my friend's retired mother Veronica, a our neighborhood’s crafting queen, to paint an eagle and some stars on our faces.