Winners and Losers of Team Canada Full Roster for 4 Nations Face-Off
After months of speculation and guessing, we now know the official Team Canada roster for the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off.
The tournament, which will take place in February, is the first best-on-best international tournament featuring NHL players since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey and will feature teams from the United States, Canada, Finland and Sweden.
It is a nice preview for the NHL's return to the 2026 Winter Olympics.
The Canadian roster (shown above) has a lot of the expected names, but also a few surprises.
Now that we know the roster, who is on and who is off, it is time to talk about some of the winners and losers.
Winner: Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid on the Same Team
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This seems like a big deal. Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid were the two most hyped players to enter the NHL in decades, and both have not only matched the expectations, they have exceeded them.
Crosby's career is one of the best in NHL history as he continues to climb the all-time scoring leaderboards and has three Stanley Cups, Olympic Gold and multiple individual awards on his resume.
McDavid has not quite had the team success, but he has been the most dominant offensive player in the NHL since entering the league and (as of Wednesday) has 140 more points than any other player in the league since his debut in the 2015-16 season.
They have been two of the most dominant players of this era and are both on their way to becoming all-time greats. Now they get to play on the same team, and perhaps even on the same power-play unit. It will be a sight to see.
Loser: Connor Bedard
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Objectively speaking, Bedard probably did not deserve a spot on this team. At least not yet.
He is still only 19 years old and his season so far has not been dominant with five goals and 19 total points in 25 games. From a big-picture standpoint, that is fine. We sometimes set expectations that are too high for players like him when they enter the NHL and forget that development and progression are not the same for everybody. It took Nathan MacKinnon a few years before he became a megastar. Not everyone steps right in like Crosby or McDavid and instantly starts scoring 100 points.
Still, Bedard is an immense talent and figures to be a staple on Canadian rosters well into the future.
This might have been a good time to get him some top-level international experience in a tournament that is not quite as high stakes as, say, the Olympics. It would have also been exciting to see Crosby, McDavid and Bedard on the same team and represent three different age levels of NHL stars.
If Bedard develops as everybody expects and hopes over the next year and a half, he should be an Olympic participant. If he is not, that would be a problem—either for his development or Hockey Canada's decision-making.
Winner: Pairing Teammates
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When piecing together what are basically All-Star teams there can sometimes be concerns with how players will actually play alongside each other. In Canada's case, it was actually able to piece together several sets of teammates, including two potential defensive pairings.
Cale Makar and Devon Toews have been one of the league's best defense pairings the past few years in Colorado, and they figure to be locks to play together in this tournament. At least they should be.
They also have the potential to keep Vegas teammates Alex Pietrangelo and Shea Theodore together (though they have not played as much together as teammates).
At forward, they also have three Tampa Bay Lightning players, including the potential for a great depth line with Anthony Cirelli and Brandon Hagel.
Keeping teammates together should not be the top priority when putting together a roster like this, but when the opportunity presents itself it can be an enormous advantage.
Loser: Canadian Goaltending
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The forward and defense groups for Canada are as good and deep as any other groups in this tournament. They could probably piece together two teams that could compete for a championship at those positions.
The Achilles heel of this team is clearly in net with the trio of Jordan Binnington, Adin Hill and Sam Montembault.
It is just...not impressive.
It is also worth wondering if they are even taking the best goalies when somebody like Logan Thompson was also sitting out there as a possibility.
Goaltending is the one position that can make or break a team, and of the four teams in this tournament, Canada might be in the fourth spot when it comes to the position.
It is a concern. It could be a problem.
Winner: Tampa Bay Connection
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We already talked about the potential benefit of having teammates together, and the Tampa Bay Lightning have quite a few connections here.
They have head coach Jon Cooper behind the bench, and he has three of his players—Brayden Point, Brandon Hagel and Anthony Cirelli—on his roster.
Point was one of the six players chosen for the roster ahead of time, so we knew he was going to be on the team, while Hagel and Cirelli have the potential to form an outstanding depth line.
Sometimes international teams can overthink the roster-building process when it comes to these tournaments. You do not need a checking line. It is okay to just load up on stars when you do not have salary-cap constraints to worry about.
Maybe keeping Hagel and Cirelli together is an example of overthinking it.
On the other hand, they are really good and productive individually, and really good together as a group.
Over the past three seasons, Hagel and Cirelli have spent 1,114 minutes together during 5-on-5 play and outscored teams by a 65-52 margin with a 55.8 percent expected goals share. That is a great duo. It should work against any competition.
Loser: Steven Stamkos and Tom Wilson
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Nashville's Steven Stamkos and Washington's Tom Wilson seem like two of the more notable omissions from the roster.
In both cases it is completely understandable, but also a little surprising.
In regards to Stamkos, no, he is not the player he used to be at his peak. But he is still Steven Stamkos and can still stand in the face-off circle and unload one-timers at the net on the power play. He also would have added to the Tampa Bay connection (even though he does not actually play for Tampa Bay at this point).
Given his track record, success and star power, he seemed to be a good bet to be on the roster even if his play has declined.
Wilson might not be your prototypical international tournament player, but he was talked about a lot as a potential player on this roster in the lead-up to the roster selection and is having a strong year offensively with 19 points in his first 25 games (as of Tuesday).
If we are being objective, Canada probably did not make a glaring mistake leaving either player off the roster. It just seemed like both might have had an opportunity to make it and may have expected it.
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