Sweden and Finland rounded out their rosters for the 4 Nations Face-Off on Wednesday by choosing a handful of recent Stanley Cup champions in an effort to win the first international tournament with the NHL’s best players since 2016.
Finland picked Florida’s Anton Lundell, Eetu Luostarinen and Niko Mikkola and Colorado’s Artturi Lehkonen among its final 17 players.
“It’s big value,” said Finland general manager Jere Lehtinen, who was also in charge of the team that won gold at the 2022 Olympics without NHL talent. “You have a few players who have won and have been in tough situations through their careers, so when it comes to a tournament like that, it’s a quick tournament. You have to be ready right away.”
Sweden selected Vegas’ William Karlsson, a 2023 Cup winner, and is stacked in goal with Minnesota's Filip Gustavsson, New Jersey's Jacob Markstrom and Ottawa's Linus Ullmark, the 2023 Vezina Trophy winner who was traded by Boston before the season.
The Swedish Hockey Federation opted for veteran experience on defense with Edmonton's Mattias Ekholm and Minnesota's Jonas Brodin, to go along with young Buffalo captain Rasmus Dahlin. Up front, the Swedes did not overlook youth, choosing Anaheim's 19-year-old center Leo Carlsson and Detroit's 22-year-old winger Lucas Raymond among their forwards.
“We went with an experienced group,” Sweden general manager Josef Boumedienne said. “We’ve got a few really good young players that did not make the roster, but we decided with a short tournament like this, basically do-or-die games in every single one of them, we went with a little more experienced group and we have a lot of leadership qualities in our group that we were excited about.”
The Finns took some role players in piecing together a team in front of Nashville goaltender Juuse Saros, including Montreal's Joel Armia and San Jose's Mikael Granlund, who's having something of a career renaissance with the Sharks.
“As a young player in Finland, that’s one of the biggest things you can have in a hockey career, to play for your country,” Granlund said this week. "I’ve always just actually loved those moments and I’ve had good success on the national team. It’s really cool and, having the 4 Nations, that’s best against best, so that’s special.”
Among the final decisions, Sweden left off Hampus Lindholm to bring Brodin, citing the Boston defenseman's injury and tight timeline as the reason. Finland put Patrik Laine on the roster that had to be locked in earlier this week before the scoring winger made his season debut Tuesday night for Montreal.
“We’ve been talking with him and knowing where he’s at,” Lehtinen said. “Overall, there’s two months before the tournament starts, so there’s a lot of games before then and I think it’s enough time to get him in good game shape and playing well.”
Toronto's Jani Hakanpää got the nod on the blue line even though he has only played in two games this season coming off a knee injury. Finland only had the choice of 10 defensemen to pick from.
“We know that we don’t have too many D-men who’s playing in the NHL,” coach Antti Pennanen said. “But still, we have a good back end: strong and big, and they are able to play against top forwards.”
The United States and Canada are set to unveil their choices later Wednesday. The round-robin tournament with the top two teams facing off in the final is taking place from Feb. 12-20, with the first half in Montreal and second half in Boston.
Because the NHL did not participate in the 2018 Olympics in South Korea and pandemic-related scheduling issues forced the league to pull out of the 2022 Games in Beijing, this is the first country versus country men's tournament in the sport with the best players involved since the World Cup of Hockey in 2016. The hope was to stage the event this past winter, but questions over how to handle Russian players given that country's war in Ukraine pushed it to 2025 and reduced the teams involved to these four.
Each country's first six players were named in late June: Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel, Matthew Tkachuk, Quinn Hughes, Charlie McAvoy and Adam Fox for the U.S.; Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, Brad Marchand and Brayden Point for Canada; Mika Zibanejad, William Nylander, Filip Forsberg, Victor Hedman, Erik Karlsson and Gustav Forsling for Sweden and Saros, Aleksander Barkov, Mikko Rantanen, Sebastian Aho, Miro Heiskanen and Esa Lindell for Finland.
“The excitement is palpable — not just among fans but among the players," NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said Sunday in Boston. "That’s one of the reasons we brought back international best-on-best (competition). We know how important it is to our players to represent their countries, and so we’re really looking forward to it.”
The NHL has committed to participating in the Milan Olympics in 2026 and then again in 2030 in the south of France. The goal of the league and Players' Association is to get on schedule with an international tournament every even-numbered year with World Cups in 2028, 2032 and beyond.
___
AP freelance writer Ken Powtak in Boston contributed.
___
AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
Stephen Whyno, The Associated Press
