The 4 Nations Face-Off is quickly drawing to a close and it has by all accounts been a tremendous success for the NHL.

For the most part, the action on the ice has been fantastic and it has been clear from the start of the tournament how much the players care about the opportunity to represent their country. The fans both in the buildings and online have gotten engaged with the games which has resulted in a rocking atmosphere. It certainly helped to have a bit of hatred to up the intensity as was evident in Saturday’s classic between Canada and the USA with three fights in the first nine seconds.

The ratings have backed it up as Saturday’s game alone peaked at 5.2 million viewers in the US alone, making it the highest viewed non-Stanley Cup Final game since 2019. It even outperformed the NBA All-Star game, which has given the NHL a rare win over the league they have spent decades trying to catch up to. Without having seen the numbers that the Championship game between Canada and the USA would bring as the game has not happened yet at the time of filing, the NHL surely must be pleased with how well things have gone for them with the 4 Nations.

Despite how successfully it has gone to this point, it is certainly far from perfect. The absence of other notable powerhouses in hockey like the Czech Republic and Russia (though their absence is far more understandable) makes it not true best-on-best hockey. The introductions to the games take quite a long time which results in the start of the game being well over 20 minutes past when it was scheduled to begin. The rules on how to deal with injuries have been murky and seem to have been strung together on the fly.

However, one area in which the 4 Nations could have done better was how they handled the final day of the round-robin. More specifically with how they built the schedule for the last two games before the Finals.

Going into Monday’s action, three teams had a chance to punch their ticket to the championship game against the USA. Canada and Finland would qualify if either of them won against each other in regulation or picked up an overtime win plus a Sweden loss in regulation. Speaking of which, they would have gotten in if they won in regulation against the Americans and if the Canada-Finland game went past regulation with the latter team winning.

It certainly could have had the makings of an exciting finish, but the facade quickly falls apart when you consider that Canada was the clear favourite against Finland and there was a good chance that the second game would end up being meaningless. In fairness, Finland gave it all they could to force overtime but time went against them and an empty net goal from Sidney Crosby resulted in the evening tilt between the US and Sweden being pointless.

I understand why the NHL scheduled the games that far apart from a logistical standpoint as the last thing the organizers would want is a repeat of what occurred in the 2020 Playoff Bubble. An afternoon game at Scotiabank Arena between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Columbus Blue Jackets needed five overtimes to finish and the sheer length of the game resulted in them delaying the next game between the Boston Bruins and Carolina Hurricanes to the next day. There was no chance of something like that happening in the round robins as the rules beyond regulation were a 10-minute 3-on-3 OT session and then a shootout if the score remained tied, but the NHL certainly wanted to avoid any logistical nightmares.

The issue with this lengthy gap between the Monday games is from a competitive and integrity standpoint. The NHL had set aside nine layers of tiebreakers that could be used if there was ever a scenario where two teams were level on points at the end of round robin. They are standard stuff and range from head-to-head results and total wins, to total goals scored and fewest goals allowed.

Because the start times of the two games were so far apart, it was too easy to set up a scenario of potential collusion. That’s not to say that there would have been a game akin to the Disgrace of Gijón, but it would have been in everyone’s best interest to ensure the integrity of the game was maintained. As a result of the Disgrace of Gijón, FIFA changed the rules for all future group-stage games to have them be played simultaneously as they had previously been held on separate days. As a result, there have been no further incidents like it and has made the final days of the group stage some of the most exciting moments of each World Cup ever since.

This is something the NHL should have taken into consideration when planning out the 4 Nations schedule and it would have also gone a long way toward making the final day of the round-robin far more entertaining than it ended up being.

It is certainly possible that Canada could have still ended up clinching a spot in the finals as they did in reality, but the on-ice action would have been much more engaging from a viewer’s standpoint. Instead of going into their game knowing they were eliminated, Sweden could have been making an even bigger push against the US to try and secure a spot in the championship game. This could have been easy to pull off for the event organizers since the NHL used the Bell Centre and TD Gardens for the tournament and all they would do is have the simultaneous games be held at both venues.

Some may suggest that the NHL could have done what the NFL does in having the last games before the postseason have a TBD label for the time and adjust once it is clear where things stand for playoff-clinching scenarios. It may solve the issue of avoiding a meaningless game, but there still would have been a potential for collusion to occur so this idea would not have fully solved the issue at hand.

Others may feel that going the route of simultaneous games would have killed the TV ratings and minimized the return profits for the league. But that argument falls apart when you consider that it would have been easy for the NHL to work around this problem by making the game nationally available on two channels and making the two games connected during the broadcast. This is what Hockey Night in Canada does every Saturday night during the regular season and it has worked well for them to this point.

Sportsnet has two channels readily available nationally and they could have easily put the games on each channel so viewers could flip back and forth to check the scores of both games. In the US, they could have put the game on ABC and ESPN while both Sweden and Finland could have done something similar for their respective sports channels. The games also fell on a holiday so there was no chance of viewers being lost by having the games running simultaneously. If anything, the action would have been far more compelling to watch and ticket revenues would have seen a boost because of the games happening at the same time.

Players and fans have been long deprived of international best-on-best hockey and the 4 Nations has fulfilled that need hugely while also serving as an appetizer for the forthcoming Olympics and World Cup of Hockey. Despite its limitations and setbacks, the NHL should still feel good about how well this tournament has gone before the dramatic conclusion on Thursday in Boston.

Still, the NHL missed out on a golden opportunity to go the route of the last games of the round-robin being held simultaneously and they should keep this idea in mind the next time they want to hold a tournament like the 4 Nations.