Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic
BOSTON — The last few years of All-Star Games left some hockey fans suspect of the quality of play we’d see at the 4 Nations Face-off.
They were sorely mistaken.
This was never going to be a series of slow, throw-away All-Star Games, in which hits and even defense are nonexistent.
This has certainly been no dull skills competition.
This was the NHL’s return to the international stage for the first time in almost a decade.
“I think people maybe have this tournament confused for an All-Star Game,” said Team Canada’s Connor McDavid, who had a major hand in designing the skills competition at last year’s All-Star weekend in Toronto, at the beginning of the tournament. “It’s not an All-Star Game. It’s a competitive event. Everyone wants to win, and you saw that [on the first day of competition on Feb. 12.]”
The tournament, hosted in Montreal and Boston over the last 10 days, has thrust hockey into the mainstream spotlight.
It wouldn’t have been possible without the undoubted buy-in from the players, who have given everything they have in each game they’ve played. Team Canada coach Jon Cooper has marveled at the way McDavid, Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon are dumping and chasing pucks.
Injuries have inflicted each nation. That’s how hard they’ve played.
The flu has run rampant in each dressing room. Players have fought through it.
No one has wanted to miss a second of what has become the most thrilling display for the sport in recent memory.
“There’s not one person here at this event that wouldn’t do anything to win this tournament, and I think that’s shared amongst everybody,” said Charlie McAvoy, who played through a shoulder injury in Team USA’s thrilling 3-1 win over Canada in the round-robin, before missing their final two games because it was much worse than initially diagnosed and became infected. “I don’t know, I’ve never been to an All-Star Game. You can have the All-Star Game. I’d rather play in this instead.”
The toll it’s taken on each player is evident.
Between the emotion and intensity of each game, paired with rough travels through a snowstorm from Montreal to Boston, the tournament has been taxing for everybody. You could see the exhaustion on each player’s face during the off-day press conferences.
Logistically, it would be a lot to ask players to do this every year. Not only that, but it would probably dilute the product and the tournament’s appeal.
The NHL and NHLPA have asserted plans to participate in the best-on-best competition every two years, between their own tournament and the Olympics, which NHL players are set to return this time next year in Milan, Italy.
Last season’s Saturday afternoon All-Star Game in Toronto drew just under 1.4 million viewers on ABC, which was down seven percent from 2023’s numbers, according to Sports Business Journal. The league also had just 823,000 viewers for the All-Star Skills Challenge in primetime, down 20 percent from the previous year.
According to an NHL release, the first USA-Canada clash saw a 203 percent increase from viewership numbers seen when the border neighbors squared off in the 2016 World Cup of Hockey.
They garnered approximately 10.1 viewers across North America.
“For me, we’re here to celebrate a game,” Cooper said in his Thursday morning press conference. “If after this game all the little girls out there and boys out there that are inspired by the players that play this game and how they compete, if they after watching tonight go and become hockey players, that’s the real win, not who wins on the ice.”
