Finland picks recent Cup champs, Sweden mixes youth and experience with 4 Nations Face-Off rosters

By Stephen Whyno, The Associated Press on December 4, 2024.

Vegas Golden Knights center William Karlsson (71) skates past Winnipeg Jets center Mark Scheifele (55) during the second period of an NHL hockey game Friday, Nov. 29, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Ian Maule)

Sweden and Finland rounded out their rosters for the 4 Nations Face-Off on Wednesday by choosing a handful of recent Stanley Cup champions in an effort to win the first international tournament with the NHL’s best players since 2016.

Finland picked Florida’s Anton Lundell, Eetu Luostarinen and Niko Mikkola and Colorado’s Artturi Lehkonen among its final 17 players. Sweden selected Vegas’ William Karlsson and is stacked in goal with Minnesota’s Filip Gustavsson, New Jersey’s Jacob Markstrom and Ottawa’s Linus Ullmark, the 2023 Vezina Trophy winner who was traded by Boston before the season.

The Swedish Hockey Federation opted for veteran experience on defense with Edmonton’s Mattias Ekholm and Minnesota’s Jonas Brodin, to go along with young Buffalo captain Rasmus Dahlin. Up front, the Swedes did not overlook youth, choosing Anaheim’s 19-year-old center Leo Carlsson and Detroit’s 22-year-old winger Lucas Raymond among their forwards.

The Finns took some role players in piecing together a team in front of Nashville goaltender Juuse Saros, including Montreal’s Joel Armia and San Jose’s Mikael Granlund, who’s having something of a career renaissance with the Sharks.

“I’ve always loved to play (in) national tournaments,” Granlund said this week. “I’ve always loved to play for Team Finland. As a young player in Finland, that’s one of the biggest things you can have in a hockey career, to play for your country, and I’ve always just actually loved those moments and I’ve had good success on the national team. It’s really cool and, having the 4 Nations, that’s best against best, so that’s special.”

The United States and Canada are set to unveil their choices later Wednesday. The round-robin tournament with the top two teams facing off in the final is taking place from Feb. 12-20, with the first half in Montreal and second half in Boston.

Because the NHL did not participate in the 2018 Olympics in South Korea and pandemic-related scheduling issues forced the league to pull out of the 2022 Games in Beijing, this is the first country versus country men’s tournament in the sport with the best players involved since the World Cup of Hockey in 2016. The hope was to stage the event this past winter, but questions over how to handle Russian players given that country’s war in Ukraine pushed it to 2025 and reduced the teams involved to these four.

Each country’s first six players were named in late June: Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel, Matthew Tkachuk, Quinn Hughes, Charlie McAvoy and Adam Fox for the U.S.; Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar, Brad Marchand and Brayden Point for Canada; Mika Zibanejad, William Nylander, Filip Forsberg, Victor Hedman, Erik Karlsson and Gustav Forsling for Sweden and Saros, Aleksander Barkov, Mikko Rantanen, Sebastian Aho, Miro Heiskanen and Esa Lindell for Finland.

“The excitement is palpable – not just among fans but among the players,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said Sunday in Boston. “That’s one of the reasons we brought back international best-on-best (competition). We know how important it is to our players to represent their countries, and so we’re really looking forward to it.”

The NHL has committed to participating in the Milan Olympics in 2026 and then again in 2030 in the south of France. The goal of the league and Players’ Association is to get on schedule with an international tournament every even-numbered year with World Cups in 2028, 2032 and beyond.

___

AP freelance writer Ken Powtak in Boston contributed.

___

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl