In a month when the NFL, NBA, and NHL all hosted all-star festivities, only the NHL, the least-watched sport of the big four sports leagues, pulled off a truly successful best-on-best spectacle.

The NFL Pro Bowl on Sunday, Feb. 2, during which the NFL’s best players half-heartedly competed in a flag football game that served as a lackluster precursor to the following week’s Super Bowl, declined in viewership by 18% compared to last year. The NBA All-Star Game on Sunday, Feb. 16 had its second-lowest All-Star ratings in league history, as LeBron James bowed out due to injury hours before the game, and the three-hour broadcast only featured about 42 minutes of basketball. 

The NHL, by contrast, managed to strike gold with their new version of the best-on-best events: the 4 Nations Face-Off. The tournament featured the league’s best players from Canada, Finland, Sweden, and the United States representing their respective countries. The national teams squared off in a round robin-style tournament, with the two best sides playing against each other in the finals. Not only did this structure of play incentivize the players to buy in and fight harder than ever, but it also captivated sports fans across the globe, as many new viewers (myself included) tuned in for the Thursday, Feb. 20 final between the United States and Canada.

How was the NHL able to achieve what the NFL and NBA couldn’t? Let’s unpack the circumstances that made hockey the thing to watch this February, and how it may impact the future of all-star games in some of the United States’ biggest sports.

A Global Affair

Like any sport, international play and international success is a goal of many athletes who strive to be great. Stephen Curry finally stepped onto the Olympics court this past summer to complete his legendary resume with a gold medal. There’s something about representing your country that brings out the strongest and most passionate play from the world’s best athletes. Representing their home countries in an all-out battle to see what nation reigns supreme can drive players to try harder in international tournaments than we may ever see in regular leagues’ regular all-star festivities.

Hockey is no different. One of the greatest sports movies of all time, 2004’s “Miracle,” perfectly depicts the excellence of an athlete representing their country, as Herb Brooks (played by Kurt Russell) leads a scrappy United States hockey team to a massive upset over four-time defending champion Soviet Union on their way to a gold medal in the 1980 Olympics. A gold medal can make or break a player’s Hall of Fame case, or make a team go down in history.

It can also make a global audience tune in at a level almost unheard of for hockey. 16.1 million American and Canadian viewers watched their home countries duke it out in the championship match. That’s the second-most watched hockey game in the past decade, and it’s the most watched NHL game in the United States since hockey returned to TV broadcasts in 1995. 

The Canada-United States Rivalry at Its Best

Driving much of the viewership was this fabled rivalry between Canada and the United States. Canada’s 16 Olympic medals in ice hockey, including 9 golds, is best in the world, and the United States’ 11 is second. The last time the two teams met in the final of an international tournament was at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, B.C., where Canada won in sudden-death overtime thanks to a golden goal from first-time Olympian and then-fresh-new face of hockey Sidney Crosby.

Going into the tournament, commentators and fans alike questioned whether the U.S. had enough rising talent to compete with Canada, the clear favorite to win. Crosby, now the oldest member and captain of his team, led a Canadian side with loads of talent, including Connor McDavid, widely regarded as the best player in the NHL this season, reigning league MVP Nathan MacKinnon, and plenty of other stars. The United States, led by 2022 NHL MVP Auston Matthews, was similarly star-studded, from defenseman Jaccob Slavin—who had a masterful tournament—to brothers Brady and Matthew Tkachuk—who made a name for themselves early and often both on the scoreboard and in the penalty box. 

The two teams squared off for the first time in the competition on Saturday, Feb. 15, where the United States looked to send a message early. Three fights broke out within the first nine seconds of game time as the Red, White, and Blue looked to rattle Canada. After McDavid put Canada up 1–0, the U.S. responded with three straight goals to win 3–1. Jake Guentzel found the back of the net twice, as the United States pulled off the upset in what many hoped to be the first of two meetings between the countries.

Thankfully, hockey fans were treated to the rematch they hoped for, as Canada and the United States both won their way to the final match where they were to compete for the first 4 Nations Face-Off title. MacKinnon and Brady Tkachuk both scored early, making it 1–1 at the first intermission. Jake Sanderson for the United States and Sam Bennett for Canada got themselves on the board in the second period, leaving it 2–2. The third period turned into a battle of the netminders, as surprise performer Canadian Jordan Binnington and the American who currently leads the league in every stat count, Connor Hellebuyck, made it a scoreless third period, sending the game into a next-goal-wins overtime.

With the game on the line, Mathews drifted away from his mark, leaving McDavid undefended in the slot. McDavid secured the puck after it rebounded off a face-off near the United States’ goal and fired a point-blank shot past Hellebuyck’s reach and into the net. Canada defeated the U.S. 3–2 on another golden goal overtime winner and ended the questions about whether the United States is possibly better than them at ice hockey. You couldn’t write a script much better.

How Ice Hockey Can Capitalize on this Success

The massive turnout for the 4 Nations Face-Off puts the NHL in a place it hasn’t been in years. In February, what is typically considered a lull for the American sports fan, people are talking about hockey like they never have before. 

The league needs to translate this momentum into ratings for the rest of the NHL season. There’s still just under two months left in the regular season, and new hockey fans have a lot to catch up on before the playoffs get underway. The Florida Panthers are eager to return to the Stanley Cup Final for the third straight year, McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers are thirsty for revenge after losing in the championship last season, and Hellebuyck is trying to drag the Winnepeg Jets to their first ever real run at the Cup. The 4 Nations tournament might well have grown the game, but it’s up to the NHL to make sure those new fans stick through the end of the season and into the playoffs.

Arguably more important, though, is how much attention hockey will get at the 2026 Winter Olympics, which will be the first time since 2014 that the NHL will allow their players to participate in Olympic hockey. Last week gave us an early forecast of which nation might be the strongest right now, but there’s still a year before the games take place, and a lot can change. While Canada may be high off of their 4 Nations victory, some of their best players are aging, and it may be more difficult for them to compete come next year. The United States will be out for revenge, looking to prove a point and return them to the top step of the podium for the first time since 1980. Finland will want to defend their Olympic crown, Sweden will have a chip on their shoulder, and Russia might be allowed to return as defending silver medalists. It should make for an entertaining competition, and hopefully the new spotlight on the NHL will translate to great ratings for Olympic hockey.

How the Other Big Four Leagues Can Respond

The NHL just blew every other all-star game or event out of the water in recent years. The 4 Nations Face-Off was more entertaining to watch than most other similar events in recent history. Other leagues will surely want to replicate their success, but ultimately it’s up to the NBA to respond, since hockey and basketball seasons overlap.

The MLB won’t change their format, even if games are less entertaining. Because it takes place in July, the league isn’t necessarily competing with anyone for ratings. The NFL’s Pro Bowl events may be on the decline, but the sport’s popularity remains consistent. Who in the NFL is going to care about the Pro Bowl when the league dominates Thanksgiving weekend and just overtook basketball in having the best Christmas slate?

The NBA, though, has some thinking to do. They’ve switched up the structure of the All-Star game multiple times within the last decade, and yet their ratings are down, players aren’t trying, and it’s simply not an entertaining watch. It’s already been a bad year for the NBA’s viewership numbers, and even though the NBA Trade Deadline brought many major headlines back to basketball, the All-Star game flop is not a promising sign. So what can the NBA do to try and replicate the NHL’s success?

The most obvious answer is to set up a United States versus the World game, where the best players from the U.S. square off against the league’s blossoming international talent. However, only seven of the 24 All-Stars this season were international players, and even if you could field a team of 12 international players, you run the risk of too many American-born players missing out on getting selected. At some point, the league can only lose so many of their superstars to a U.S. vs World format.

Another idea floating around the internet is to set up teams based on state or region within the U.S. For example, one team would be players from California defending their state as the best state for basketball. If there was a format where players could represent their state or region as the best region for basketball, I think that would incentivize the players more to compete. If you had players representing Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and the rest of the world competing in a tournament to determine the true mecca of basketball, that may be the closest opportunity the league has to replicate the success the NHL just had.

No matter how much we can speculate about what the future holds for any of these sports leagues, there is one undeniable fact: the NHL just struck gold with the 4 Nations Face-Off. Never in the last decade of sports have so many people tuned in to hockey and talked about it to the level it is being discussed now. For the sake of the sport, all we can hope now is for the league to capitalize on this new exposure. For non-hockey fans, hopefully other leagues will be able to replicate the success of what’s taking place on the ice. 

Max Forstein can be reached at mforstein@wesleyan.edu.