NHL Showcasing Its Young Stars in 4 Nations Face-Off

The speed, intensity, and precision of 4 Nations Face-Off has already been everything the fans, league, and players had hoped for. The game’s veteran stars including Sidney Crosby and Brad Marchand have tallied points and highlight-reel moments, but the tournament has been marked by the high level of play of its youngest stars, including Connor McDavid, the Tkachuck brothers, Mitch Marner, Sebastian Aho, and Matt Boldy. 

These players have been critical to the success of the one-off international best-on-best tournament replacing the 2025 All-Star Game. But the future of the NHL is also in their hands. 

The league well knows some of its brightest stars will hang up their skates in the next few years, including 37-year-old Crosby, 39-year-old Alex Ovechkin, and 40-year-old Marc-Andre Fleury. (This is something the NBA is facing as well: LeBron James is 40, and Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, and Russell Westbrook are all 36.) The upcoming generation will need to carry the torch for both the NHL and hockey at large in a way unique to today’s on-ice product and fandom. 

The league has used 4 Nations Face-Off to begin leaning on this vanguard of talent. 

In Montréal, these stars’ faces plastered the city; leading up to the event, both ESPN and the NHL thrust them onto broadcasts and social media to explain the tournament and build anticipation in interviews and memes. But even before 4 Nations Face-Off, the league has already gone hard to shift focus to young players and the modern brand of hockey they play that’s faster and flashier.

Casey Hall, the NHL’s SVP of marketing and innovation, says there’s a different product on the ice in the past decade that has changed the face of the game, and opened the door to beckon a new wave of fans. “Eliminating the two-line pass, really getting tight on how we call clutching and grabbing really allows skill and speed to showcase itself,” he says. “It took a little bit of time for players in the league to adjust. And what we’re seeing now … is this group of players who grew up playing the game that way,” he says. 

Hall has led the NHL’s “Golden Era Is Now” viral media campaign, including “Tricky,” which premiered leading up to 4 Nations Face-Off and features players including Matthew Tkachuk and William Nylander one-upping each other on trick shots. The spot leads with the “Michigan” goal from 19-year-old Connor Bedard, one of the game’s biggest stars—the kind of move that’s primed to dazzle.

“There’s so much skill in our games now, and you see it even more throughout younger generations,” 23-year old Boldy of Team USA, who plays regular-season hockey with the Minnesota Wild, told FOS at 4 Nations Face-Off in Montréal. “It’s just so natural for them, so I think that skill level is definitely climbing, which makes things a little bit more exciting.”

NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly tells FOS, “There could be any number of players from any of the teams who could kind of raise that profile in and of themselves with their sheer skill. This can benefit not only those players and their teams … but also the National Hockey League.”

The league is looking far into the future: Hall says fans as young as Gen Alpha are part of the growth calculus. In the present, the NHL is enjoying dividends as a huge swath of eyes are on the young players of 4 Nations Face-Off. Canadian fans in the Bell Centre erupted when McDavid netted the first goal in Saturday’s game, and the youth-stacked U.S. and Canada teams will rematch in what should be a contentious—and potentially record-viewership—final.