As we catch up on some news from around the Tampa Bay Lightning stratosphere, it looks three more members of the team won’t be enjoying an extra long break in February. Earlier this week, three more forwards were added to their country’s rosters for the inaugural tournament.
Jake Guentzel will join Team USA while Brandon Hagel and Anthony Cirelli will suit up for Team Canada. That brings the Lightning’s total number of players involved in the 4 Nations Face-off to five, as Victor Hedman (Team Sweden) and Brayden Point (Team Canada) had already been announced.
With five players going, the Lightning are tied with the Rangers, Wild, and Avalanche for third-most players participating. The Golden Knights are sending seven while the Panthers will send eight. The trio of Cirelli, Hagel, and Point will be coached by Jon Cooper while Julien BriseBois is the assistant general manager of Team Canada. Coach Cooper is also bringing along Tampa Bay’s mental performance coach, Ryan Hamilton.
The rest of the team will take a break from February 12th-20th while four countries, Finland, Sweden, Canada, and the USA will send teams to represent their countries for an in-season tournament that will serve as a precursor for the return of the hockey World Cup. Montreal and Boston are serving as host cities with the teams being broadcast on TNT, ESPN, and ABC in the United States while Sportsnet and TVA have the rights in Canada.
For Guentzel, it will be the first time he has worn the red, white, and blue in competition. He’ll be reunited with his former head coach, Mike Sullivan. The US are finally able to play a best-on-best competition (yes, we know Russia isn’t there) with their greatest generation of players left by Auston Matthews, the Hughes brothers (Jack and Quinn), and the Tkachuk boys (Matthew and Brady). Their real strength will be in goal with Jake Oettinger, Connor Hellebuyck, and Jeremy Swayman playing between the pipes.
Victor Hedman has represented Sweden at every international level going back to the 2005-06 season when he was part of their U16 team. Can he add a 4 Nations trophy to his mantle, which already sports gold medals from the Hlinka-Gretzky Tournament and the World Cup? Or yeah, and those two Stanley Cup bookends.
Cirelli has yet to taste gold in international play, as he was part of the silver-medal U20 team in 2017 and also picked up the second-place prize in the 2019 World Championship. He is a noted winner in all other aspects (Memorial Cup champ and Stanley Cup champ x2) so it wouldn’t be shocking if he adds another title to his resume. The other half of his brain, Brandon Hagel, does have World Championship gold, having won it in 2021.
Much like Hedman, Brayden Point has gold medals hanging in his closet as he has one from the Hlinka-Gretzky tournament and one from the 2015 U20 championships (which Nick Paul was on as well). With Canada running extremely deep at the center position (Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby, and Nathan MacKinnon are all on the team) so Point will probably play on the wing. Will Coach Cooper create an all-Lightning line at some point? Stay tuned to find out.
With more than two months to go until the tournament kicks off, there is a good chance that the rosters are going to change at some point. Since this is hockey, someone (more likely someones) will get hurt and require a substitution. Could there be more Lightning players cancelling their February vacation plans? Not likely.
A quick scan of the roster reveals Ryan McDonagh as the most likely American to make the roster if one of the seven defensemen selected isn’t able to go. Team USA isn’t as deep on the blue line as they are in the forward department, and McDonagh would add some solid veteran experience to a rather young defensive corps. The 35-year-old from St. Paul, Minnesota last represented the U.S. in the 2017 World Cup.
Congratulations to all of the Bolts that were chosen for the tournament. While it isn’t quite the Olympics, it is still special to represent your country on the international stage.
