Report: Boston to host new, NHL-created international tourney in 2025
The National Hockey League’s jump back into best-on-best international play will take its first steps in 2025, and in Boston, according to a report from DailyFaceoff’s Frank Seravalli.
The tournament, which has since been revealed as the ‘NHL 4 Nations Face-Off’, will take place in Feb. 2025, will feature four countries represented, and will be hosted by Boston and Montreal.
The four countries represented in this tournament will be the United States, Canada, Finland, and Sweden.
And though the tourney is designed to be international, it will be as NHL as it gets, all things considered.
According to the NHL’s announcement detailing the tournament’s rules and setup, each team must be comprised of 23 NHL players selected by USA Hockey, Hockey Canada, the Finnish Ice Hockey Association, and the Swedish Ice Hockey Association. Players selected for this tournament by those respective federations must also be under an NHL contract for the 2024-25 season and on an NHL roster as of Dec. 2, 2024.
In this tournament, each team play three traditional, round-robin contests, with teams earning three points for a win in regulation, two points for an overtime/shootout victory, one point for an overtime/shootout loss, and no points for a regulation loss. The top two teams will then advance to a one-game final.
The obvious bummer here from a Boston point of view is that the city’s top superstar, David Pastrnak, will not be participating in this tournament, as there will not be a Czechia team in this, which Bettman has essentially called an appetizer for the NHL’s return to the Olympics in 2026.
That said, the Bruins could still have some solid representation at this tournament between Brad Marchand (Canada), Charlie McAvoy (United States), and Linus Ullmark (Sweden). The team also has some darkhorse American options between Charlie Coyle, Trent Frederic, and Brandon Carlo depending on how USA Hockey wants to build their team, as well as goaltender Jeremy Swayman should he continue to surge as one of the league’s better netminders.
This will be the first NHL-backed international tournament since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey.
Bruins at the halfway point: Does this defense have enough?
When the Boston Bruins lost essentially their entire internal free agent list — a list that was headline by top-six forwards such as Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, and Tyler Bertuzzi — it didn’t take long for everybody to realize that the Bruins were going to shift their identity more towards being a ‘defense and goaltending’ kind of team.
On the goaltending front, the Bruins’ one-two of Jeremy Swayman and Linus Ullmark has more than delivered, as their combined .918 save percentage is second only to the Jets’ .921.
But what about Boston’s defense?
And more specifically, does this defense have enough as currently constituted?
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Ty Anderson is a writer and columnist for 985TheSportsHub.com. He has been covering the Bruins since 2010, and has been a member of the Boston chapter of the PHWA since 2013. Yell at him on Twitter/X: @_TyAnderson.