There’s a growing argument that the NHL-hosted 4 Nations Face-Off international tournament was so spectacularly successful it may damage the league’s plans for future standard All-Star Games.
That assertion has been floating around throughout the tournament, sometimes even not noting that the league already has a standard All-Star Game on the books on Long Island in 2026 (as a send-off to the Milan-Cortina Olympics, which will see the first NHL participation since 2014).
But it got a bump from an unlikely and prominent source Friday: NHL on ESPN analyst P.K. Subban, in an appearance on SportsCenter.
P.K. Subban on the 4 Nations Face-Off: “I don’t think we can ever go back to All-Star Weekend. I don’t. I really believe that after this, we have to consider doing this or something like this in replace of it.” pic.twitter.com/M9Jq5uwRNL
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 21, 2025
What’s fascinating about this is not so much the particular “this is better and should replace the All-Star Game” argument, which has been made by many. Instead, it’s that that line of argument is coming from a prominent NHL broadcaster on a rightsholder. There have been plenty of leagues that have pushed back on business reporting and commentary on rightsholders, but the NHL pushback there over the years has been especially notable.
That’s included commissioner Gary Bettman’s duels with journalists like Ron MacLean (especially during the latter’s CBC days) and Rick Westhead (especially at TSN). And that’s even seen developments like Sportsnet executives vowing to focus on stars, not business after they won Canadian rights, and drawing lines from league execs like “One of the things we like about the Rogers relationship is how much they talk about and respect the NHL brand and our ability to work together to kind of shine up that shield and support us.”
In that context, Subban publicly weighing in against the league’s stated plans is interesting. And it’s notable who’s doing it, too. The NHL has seen more annoying and less-informed comments on ESPN than this, such as Stephen A. Smith’s admissions of his hockey ignorance (which sparked their own league pushback), but Smith gets facts wrong on every league. Subban is on ESPN as a hockey analyst, not a general debate personality. So him speaking out against stated league plans feels more significant than if it was a generalist who said this.
It should be noted that the actual solution here seems likely to be a combination of All-Star Games and international tournaments. The 4 Nations Face-Off followed a long line of past best-on-best international tournaments held every four years or so, especially the Canada Cup (held every three to five years from 1976 to 1991) and the World Cup of Hockey (held in 1996, 2004, and 2016). The Winter Olympics from 1998-2014 also saw best-on-best play thanks to NHL participation, and the league’s players are set to compete in the 2026 and 2030 Olympics following a NHL deal with the NHLPA (which very much wanted that Olympic participation).
But there’s a good reason that these tournaments have only taken place every few years. (That’s in contrast to the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championships, which take place every spring but are decidedly not best-on-best thanks to their competition with the NHL playoffs). There are a lot of extra games here, especially for a 12-team Olympics or an eight-team World Cup. A four-team 4 Nations is more manageable (and produces more hotly-anticipated matchups), but this still saw four games for the two teams in the final and three for the other two teams. And it produced notable injuries, including one to Florida Panthers’ star Matthew Tkachuk in the championship game.
The time off from the NHL schedule and injury potential are a big reason why the NHL and its players haven’t been involved in more best-on-best international tournaments. And while it looks likely we’ll get more of these than we’ve seen in the past (the NHL’s announcement last year of their return to the Olympics stated plans to hold the World Cup of Hockey every four years between Olympics, so next in 2028), it seems unlikely they can be conducted every year without a big shift in thinking from NHL owners. (And in particular, it seems unlikely a NHL-run tournament like this could happen in the same year as an Olympics the league’s players are participating in, so either an All-Star Game or nothing at all would seem probable for 2026 and 2030.)
The All-Star Game’s largest value over a 4 Nations Face-Off or World Cup of Hockey is that it is simply one game over one weekend. It’s of course possible to debate if it’s still worth it in an era of declining All-Star ratings across sports. It’s also possible to discuss if there are ways to make the All-Star Game closer to this, possibly with shorter games featuring different national teams (somewhat like what was just tried in the NBA, although that was not well-received). And the NHL ASG has tried a number of formats over the years: it’s been a series of three-on-three games since 2016, and it saw a five-on-five North America vs. the World contest from 1998-2002.
But, for the moment, the All-Star Game does still exist on the NHL’s future schedule. And it’s part of the Canadian (Sportsnet) and U.S. (Warner Bros. Discovery, in the case of the ASG) NHL broadcasting contracts. So a rightsholder analyst saying on a rightsholder “I don’t think we can ever go back to All-Star Weekend” is quite a step, even if it’s not the most controversial thing Subban said this week. It’s notable to hear Subban say what he thinks so plainly, but those are unusual comments to hear from someone in his position.
