It’s been close to a nine-year wait for Nathan MacKinnon, who last played best-on-best hockey for Team North America at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, with Jon Cooper behind the bench, in an overtime game against Team Sweden.
MacKinnon had just turned 21 and scored a spectacular game-winning goal to cap what has become a legendary overtime period in that game. At the time, he probably thought this would be a regular experience for him, going up against the best in the world and thriving like he did throughout that tournament on a made-up under-23 team. Except, the next time, he would be representing Canada instead.
MacKinnon is now 29, and he finally got to have that second experience of best-on-best hockey, with Cooper behind the bench against Team Sweden, and took 56 seconds to get on the scoresheet against them again.
“A lot of nerves, honestly,” MacKinnon said after Canada’s 4-3 overtime win to open the 4 Nations Face-Off. “I haven’t played best-on-best for Team Canada ever. So definitely a lot of adrenaline, a lot of nerves. So it was nice to get an open net early. It really settled me in.”
The 4 Nations Face-Off has been written off by some as a made-up tournament, not a true best-on-best because Russia is not included, because Czechia and Slovakia aren’t included, because NHL superstars like Leon Draisaitl and Nikita Kucherov — two of the NHL’s top three scorers — aren’t here.
But despite those imperfections, the players who took part in the closest thing we have seen to best-on-best hockey since 2016 were happy to be back in this kind of elite environment.
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