Matthews, Tkachuk, Eichel headline first wave of U.S. 4 Nations roster

LAS VEGAS — The NHL’s leading goal scorer, Auston Matthews, and Stanley Cup winner Matthew Tkachuk are among the first six players to join the United States team for next year’s 4 Nations Face-Off international tournament.

Matthews and Tkachuk will be joined at forward by Jack Eichel. Defensemen Adam Fox, Quinn Hughes and Charlie McAvoy are also on the roster, USA Hockey announced Friday.

The round-robin tournament — featuring the U.S., Canada, Sweden and Finland — will be hosted by Montreal and Boston in February.

Bill Guerin, the U.S. general manager for the 4 Nations event and the 2026 Olympics, told The Athletic he was touched by how emotional the players were when he called them to let them know they were the first six to represent their country, even though they must have all known they were shoo-ins.

“To a man … they were grateful,” Guerin said. “They all expressed gratitude.”

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Earlier this month, head coach Mike Sullivan and assistant coach John Hynes joined the USA Hockey hierarchy in Minnesota to choose the first six and begin discussing the full roster. Guerin was joined by USA Hockey’s Pat Kelleher and John Vanbiesbrouck, assistant GM Tom Fitzgerald and director of player personnel Chris Kelleher. Assistant GMs Chris Drury and Bill Zito also called in.

“When we went through it and just started making the decisions, just talking about the group of players that we get to talk about, it was exciting, it was fun,” Guerin said. “These are players that you’d otherwise never be talking about because they’re franchise players. You don’t just trade for them all the time. It’s gonna be really good.

“It’s got a different feel to it. Yeah, it’s a whole different ball of wax. I mean, no salary cap. It’s the level of the players that we’re talking about and combining them all together was really exciting. We’re going to have a good team.”

It’s a good start. Matthews (Toronto Maple Leafs) has led the NHL in goals in three of the past four seasons and won the Hart Trophy as league MVP in 2021-22. Tkachuk (Florida Panthers) just won a Stanley Cup and has averaged 100 points over the past three seasons. Eichel (Vegas Golden Knights) won a Stanley Cup a year ago and scored 68 points in 63 games this past season.

On defense, the U.S. is adding the 2024 Norris Trophy winner (the Vancouver Canucks’ Hughes) and 2021 Norris winner (the New York Rangers’ Fox), as well as the defensive anchor of the record-setting 2022-23 Boston Bruins (McAvoy).

Guerin said USA Hockey decided not to name a goalie yet because he didn’t want people to start to assume the goalie chosen would be the No. 1.

The rest of the rosters will be announced in the middle of the next NHL season. The roster will consist of 13 forwards, seven defensemen and three goalies.

4 Nations Face-Off sched pic.twitter.com/IYXF3kAddA

— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) June 8, 2024

Analysis on the first 24 players

It’s a predictable list of stars and superstars. All have won a Stanley Cup, an NHL award or something at the international level — and many have won them all. Well, who is surprised? Fans love to debate snubs, but that conversation can’t take place until the final rosters are unveiled and the respective managerial teams have to get really nit-picky, especially for the Canadian and American rosters, because some very good players are going to be left off. And if that player happens to play for your favorite team, well, fans tend to take that personally.

The fact that Canada named Brad Marchand in the first six is interesting, only because, at age 36, he is no longer in his prime. But it’s notable that his two fellow Nova Scotians, Nathan MacKinnon and Sidney Crosby were also named, which means that coach Jon Cooper can use them together as a trio, and very likely will.

Gustav Forsling’s strong play over the past two seasons elevated him into Sweden’s top six. If you’d done this exercise two years ago, that selection might have mystified a lot of people.

Also: There might have been a temptation on the part of Team USA to include Brady Tkachuk or Jack Hughes right away so that we could talk about the brother acts on the American roster. Instead, they’ll have to wait. Quinn Hughes, the newly minted Norris Trophy winner is there, as is Matthew Tkachuk, the newly minted Stanley Cup champion. In goal, Connor Hellebuyck, the 2024 Vezina winner, could have easily made the grade, but the U.S. — like Canada and Sweden — elected not to include a goalie right off the top.

Only Finland did. Juuse Saros, who looks as if he’ll be a Nashville Predator for life, will anchor their roster, alongside a pair of Dallas Stars defensemen, Miro Heiskanen and Esa Lindell, and presumably captained by Aleksander Barkov.

The exercise is mostly a publicity stunt and reminds me a little of what they used to do with Olympic rosters. They’d name eight players to the initial team and then fill out the remainder of the rosters closer to the actual competition.

And of course, nothing is ever carved in stone. Hockey is a body-contact sport. Injuries happen. If a player happened to get injured in the run-up to the games, he could be dropped almost right up to the start of the competition.

I only remember it being semi-controversial once, back in 2002, when Canada named its first eight players and didn’t include goaltender Patrick Roy. Instead, they opted for seven easy choices — Rob Blake, Chris Pronger, Scott Niedermayer on defense, plus Joe Sakic, Paul Kariya, Steve Yzerman and Mario Lemieux up front.

The eighth choice was Owen Nolan, who by the time the Olympics rolled around wasn’t really a key piece anymore.

In November of 2001, Roy announced that he wouldn’t play for Canada, nominally to rest up for the remainder of the season and playoffs. Many believed at the time that if Roy had been named to the original eight, he would have chosen to play. Instead, Canada went with Martin Brodeur, Curtis Joseph and Ed Belfour in goal. Ultimately, it didn’t affect the outcome — Canada won its first gold medal in 50 years at the Salt Lake City games.

But rarely do these announcements pass by without some controversy. Three of the top five scorers in the NHL last season — Russia’s Nikita Kucherov and Artemi Panarin, and Czechia’s David Pastrnak — aren’t competing because their countries weren’t invited. That leaves J.T. Miller of East Palestine, Ohio as the highest scorer not to immediately qualify for a 4 Nations team. Miller was ninth in NHL scoring. Could he have been selected ahead of Adam Fox or Charlie McAvoy? Maybe. But it’s a stretch to call it a snub or an oversight until the final rosters are unveiled. We can save our bile for then. — Eric Duhatschek

Required reading

(Photo of Auston Matthews: Claus Andersen / Getty Images)