NHL season has international flavor with the 4 Nations Face-off as a Winter Olympics appetizer

Nico Hischier grew up in Switzerland dreaming of playing in the Winter Olympics.

“I’ve never gotten to experience that,” he said.

The countdown is underway for Hischier, who hopes to join the NHL's best at the Olympics in Milan in February 2026. This season serves as a leadup to that long-awaited return since the NHL hasn't allowed its players at the Olympics since 2014.

Hischier and the New Jersey Devils open the season in Prague against the Buffalo Sabres, two more games will take place in Finland this fall and the 4 Nations Face-off is a four-team February appetizer to the main event as the league and players embrace hockey's international roots.

“Our players — putting aside the Olympics — have a history and a tradition of representing their countries, whether it’s the world juniors or the world championships,” Commissioner Gary Bettman told The Associated Press last month. “We are the most international of the four major North American sports. There’s no question about that, and there’s no question about how our players feel about representing their countries.”

The IIHF men's world championship takes place during the Stanley Cup playoffs, and the past two Winter Olympics have gone on without NHL players. The last time the sport's cream of the crop all got to play in the same tournament was the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, and even that carried an asterisk because of the format that shifted U.S. and Canada's stars aged 23 and younger to Team North America and amalgamated those from Slovakia, Switzerland, Germany and elsewhere to form Team Europe.

Never before have Americans Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel, Patrick Kane and Adam Fox — let alone the country's stable of elite goaltenders — been able to play together internationally. Same goes for Canada's Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar.

The original idea was to host a World Cup in the winter of 2024, but Russia's war in Ukraine complicated planning and pushed the event back. The result is the 4 Nations Face-off featuring the U.S., Canada, Sweden and Finland playing in in Montreal and Boston in lieu of All-Star festivities.

“You could characterize it as a mini World Cup, if you will,” NHL Players' Association executive director Marty Walsh told The AP. “Especially as we think about heading into the 2026 Olympics, people are talking about that: a best-on-best tournament. That’s happening, so we’re doing all this stuff. It’s building that momentum.”

Walsh, the former U.S. labor secretary who previously served as Boston's mayor, sensed the buzz back home over the summer among fans already looking forward to games at the Bruins' downtown arena.

The 4 Nations Face-off was unveiled last All-Star Weekend at the same time as the agreement to send players to the next two Olympics, including 2030 in France. That takes the sting out of not being included this year for players from other countries.

“They signed two Olympics, deals for NHL players, so I guess you can take that as a little plus,” Czech winger David Pastrnak of the Bruins said. “They signed (for) the Olympics. I can look already there with an Olympic deal in place.”

Olympic participation, pending a deal with the IIHF and the IOC, was part of the extension of the collective bargaining agreement in 2020 when the league and union negotiated finishing the season in the middle of the pandemic. Players, many of whom grew up in a generation where Olympic participation was the norm, were upset about not going to South Korea in 2018, and scheduling issues forced the NHL to pull out of going to Beijing in 2022 at nearly the last minute.

Bettman said a number of players approached him after the 2026 and 2030 Olympic agreement was announced to say how thrilled they were about getting to play on that stage.

“This was all about the players wanting a best on best and representing their countries and having an opportunity to play on teams with players that they might not otherwise have a chance to play with,” Bettman said. “Yes, going to the Olympics is disruptive, but it’s the right thing to do.”

Bettman said construction of hockey arenas in Milan is back on schedule, a relief after some concern.

But there are well over 1,000 games to be played before the next Olympics. A vast majority will take place in North America, but the spotlight is also on the Devils-Sabres games in Prague on Friday and Saturday and then the Dallas Stars and NHL champion Florida Panthers playing twice in Tampere, Finland, in November.

The long-term plan is to get on an every-other-year calendar with the World Cup of Hockey in 2028 and ‘32, with those tournaments and the Global Series games in Europe boosting hockey’s footprint.

“We have a pretty busy international schedule throughout the season," Walsh said. “It shouldn’t be a one-off. It should be you do those events, but how do you build momentum off those.”