The Capitals aren’t sending anyone to the 4 Nations Face-Off. Washington goalie Logan Thompson has played the bulk of minutes for the team allowing the second-fewest goals in the NHL. But Canada never called.Patrick Smith/Getty Images
For as long as they were making it, the NHL’s argument against participating in the Olympics was that it was too much hassle.
“Incredibly disruptive,” was how commissioner Gary Bettman put it in 2019.
This suggests that doing the same job in a different location is so discombobulating to highly recompensed professionals that it may take them weeks, months even, to recover.
Because the NHL wasn’t able to say, ‘But I still don’t see how your plan makes us richer?’, this was the best it could come up with.
Now that the argument’s over, we have finally devised an experiment to test its theory – it’s called the Washington Capitals.
To no one’s surprise, except for everyone who follows hockey closely, the Capitals are currently the best team in the Eastern Conference. They’ve lost only two games in regulation this calendar year. They are on an uninterrupted, season-long heater.
This sort of team – underappreciated, overachieving – is exactly the sort you’d think could be thrown off their stride by an international tournament dropped into the middle of their campaign.
But in a quirk that may say something about the relationship between individual stars and winning hockey, the Capitals aren’t sending anyone to the 4 Nations Face-Off. Their big names are either too Russian (Alex Ovechkin), or not Canadian (Logan Thompson) or American (John Carlson) enough.
The Capitals get a couple of possible boosts here. First, several of them have now been grievously offended. Thompson’s probably at the top of that list.
The Washington goalie has played the bulk of minutes for the team allowing the second-fewest goals in the NHL. But Canada never called.
The three guys being sent in Thompson’s place all have the same goal – oh please God, don’t let me mess this up.
Thompson has a different objective – show Team Canada what a terrible mistake it made.
I know which of those four I’d rather have playing in the second half of my season.
Two weeks is a long time to be off. All of the Washington players can enjoy a guilt-free vacation, followed by a mini-camp/team-bonding exercise to get them warmed up for the final push.
There are no more hierarchies on that roster. The 4 Nations just wiped them away. Just a bunch of guys nobody wanted, in it together, looking for someone to prove wrong.
Whether that’s true or not, that’s still what I’d be whispering to them were I the head coach.
On the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got the New York Rangers. The Rangers are so far adrift of Washington in the standing that should they need to reach out, they’d have to communicate via semaphore. But the Rangers are sending six players to the 4 Nations.
Now we know what sort of team the Rangers have been trying to build for the past couple of years – a red, white and blue one. One for New York, not so much.
That two-week break isn’t as simple for the Rangers. A quarter of their workforce – the good, already overworked quarter – still has to punch in every day. The rest of the team – the part that can least afford to let themselves go – lies around poolside getting weaker.
There will be no Rangers team-building trip, because what’s the point of tightening up your game if the top line is missing? You’re going to, what, fill them in later?
‘Yeah, we changed the power play, but don’t worry, Adam Fox. Just watch how I, a third liner, do it.’
Four of those Rangers are on Team USA. Let’s hypothesize. Say the United States wins (boo). Those four Rangers could be forgiven for thinking they’d just reached the high point of their season. They’d never say it out loud. But how would you feel?
On the one hand, you’ve achieved international glory. Then you go back to a team that is playing like a bent tuba, and everyone there is carrying a new tan and five extra pounds.
What sort of mood would that put you in? Probably not one conducive to two more months of hard graft.
The other outcome is worse. Team USA loses (yay). Now you come back to the same situation – tanned, relaxed colleagues – having blown your own chance at a holiday. Maybe your confidence is shot. Maybe you’re already thinking about how humiliating it’s going to be to lose a playoff spot to Ottawa.
The last outcome does not bear consideration – that six players leave, and two of them come back in slings.
Whatever the case, it’s not the way the peak-performance wonks draw it up preseason.
Then there’s a third way – that none of this matters. That hockey players play hockey when they have to, and do nothing when they don’t. That who goes where doing what doesn’t matter to them because they are too focused on keeping their own head above water. Why worry about what Adam Fox has when you could be playing in the AHL next year?
Maybe two weeks off is the worst thing possible for the Capitals. Maybe it costs them their mojo. Maybe Thompson can’t get over the snub.
If they lose two successive games coming out of that break, everyone will say, ‘Okay, here we go.’ If they lose four, it’ll be the guys on the team saying it.
The experiment’s proof will be presented by June.
It had been so long since NHL players attempted a true best-on-best tournament that everyone forgot to have the old argument about whether those tournaments are good or bad for NHL teams. Nobody complained. Everyone seems delighted.
The 4 Nations resets that board. If Washington wins the Stanley Cup, teams around the league will be feeling some sort of way next year whenever one of their guys shows up at work and says, ‘Great news. I’m going to the Olympics’. Only this time, you’ll hear about it.