Five Of The Best Hockey Games Involving Canada, The USA, Sweden And Finland

If the 4 Nations Face-Off had been held five decades ago, when countries first started to play each other in a best-on-best format, Canada would have been a runaway winner.

European players had just begun to cross the Atlantic to play in the NHL, and the United States entered a team in the 1976 Canada Cup with only about a dozen NHL players, most of them playing on third and fourth lines.

Now, Canada is, at most, only a slight favorite.

In 1976-77, Canadians made up 89.4 percent of the players in the NHL. There were only 41 Americans (8.2 percent) and six Swedes, and Matti Hagman, a 21-year-old rookie with the Boston Bruins, was the only Finnish player in the league.

With tremendous growth in American hockey and a massive influx of European players, the percentage of Canadian players has dropped to 41.1. There are now 245 Americans, 81 Swedes and 46 Finns.

Russia was not invited because of the war in Ukraine, and critics have questioned why Czechia was left out. However, the Czechs have only 26 players in the NHL this season. Also, they were just eighth in the IIHF rankings when the tournament was planned.

Here’s a look at some of the best past matches involving the top talent from Canada, the U.S., Finland and Sweden.

Canada 3, U.S. 2 (OT)

Gold Medal Game – 2010 Vancouver Olympics

The Americans’ preliminary-round 5-3 upset win over Canada on a Sunday afternoon in front of a national TV audience came just one day short of the 30th anniversary of the U.S. collegians’ stunning conquest of the Soviet Union at Lake Placid in 1980.

But Sidney Crosby evened the score with his overtime-winner in the gold-medal game one week later. Team USA’s Zach Parise had sent the game into overtime by scoring with just 24 seconds left in regulation. Most fans agree that Crosby’s goal ranks second only to Paul Henderson’s game-winner in the 1972 Summit Series against the Soviet Union as the greatest moment in Canadian hockey history. The 2010 title game drew the largest TV audience in Canadian history: 16.7 million viewers.

Sweden 3, Finland 2

Gold Medal Game – 2006 Turin Olympics

While Peter Forsberg’s sensational move to beat Canadian goalie Corey Hirsch in a shootout of the gold-medal game in Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994 is probably the most exciting moment in the history of the Tre Kronor, NHL players did not compete in the Olympics until 1998. Therefore, we salute Nick Lidstrom for his third-period goal that gave the Swedes a narrow 3-2 win over Finland and their second Olympic gold.

The Swedes got off to a slow start, suffering shutout losses at the hands of Russia and Slovakia. However, they still finished third in their group and managed to avoid facing Canada in the quarterfinal, instead winning easily over Switzerland 6-2.

Canada 5, U.S. 2

Gold Medal Game – 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics

For 50 years, Canada had gone without a gold medal in Olympic hockey. That is until Feb. 24, 2002, when a strong team led by Mario Lemieux defeated the U.S. 5-2.

The Canadians had stumbled out of the gate, losing to Sweden, earning only a tie with the Czech Republic and barely beating a huge underdog German team in the preliminary round. Following the gold-medal game, it was revealed that a ‘lucky loonie’ had been embedded at center ice before the tournament to bring Canada good luck. After the men won their final, the coin was extracted from the ice and given to Wayne Gretzky, the team’s executive director. It wound up in the Hockey Hall of Fame, and the Royal Canadian Mint has released a commemorative edition ‘lucky loonie’ for each Olympic Games since.