The Coaches Room is a regular feature throughout the 2024-25 season by former NHL coaches and assistants who turn their critical gaze to the game and explain it through the lens of a teacher.
In this edition, Craig Johnson, a former assistant with the Anaheim Ducks and Ontario of the American Hockey League and development coach with the Los Angeles Kings, writes about how coaches will prepare their players for the upcoming 4 Nations Face-off, an international tournament featuring teams made up of only NHL players from Canada, Finland, Sweden and the United States to be held Feb. 12-20 in Montreal and Boston.
Beginning Monday, the coaches for the 4 Nations Face-Off will have a limited amount of practice time to get their teams ready to play their first games. Team Canada and Team Sweden will have two days of practice before playing the tournament opener at Bell Centre in Montreal on Feb. 12 (8 p.m. ET; MAX, truTV, TNT, SN, TVAS). Team United States and Team Finland will have three practice days before playing the next night (8 p.m. ET; ESPN+, ESPN, SN, TVAS).
In those two or three practices, the coaches will have to do some teaching. Slowing things down to go over defensive zone coverage, the penalty kill or the power play will be crucial to each team's success.
As far as implementing systems, some of the teams have players who have played for their national program before. Players from Finland and Sweden might go in and have a good idea what their system is already and how they want to play. Some of them have played together at the IIHF World Championship, a similar system growing up and throughout their development. They'll probably be able to settle a little more quickly into how they want to play, so they might be confident in how they play, and, through their structure, that could help them.
The United States and Canada have been watching and observing their players and how they have played not only in the NHL but the World Championship last May.
Coaches are not going to assume that players can play any particular situation, but they will know who they feel can handle it from watching them throughout the year. Coaches and their assistants have already created their neutral-zone package, their defensive-zone package, etc. Getting their power-play and penalty-kill units together and getting them familiar with each other will be important in such a quick tournament.