(Sunrise) The new 4 Nations Showdown tournament will be presented in February, and four of these matches will take place in Montreal, at the Bell Centre.
This was confirmed by Gary Bettman on the sidelines of the first game of the Stanley Cup final, Saturday evening at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise.
This new tournament – a sort of modified version of the Hockey World Cup tournament, last presented in 2016 – will feature four teams: Canada, the United States, Sweden and Finland.
The competition, presented from February 12 to 20, 2025, will begin with four games at the Bell Center, and will then move to Boston, with the last three games taking place at TD Garden, including the final on February 20.
“Montreal and Boston are two emblematic cities, and it was important for us to be present both in Canada and in the United States during this tournament,” explained Bill Daly, number two in the National Hockey League. We have 32 teams, but these are two cities that stood out. »
The composition of the teams is obviously not known at the moment, but on June 28, the four teams involved will each have to reveal the names of the first six players chosen.
“The Bell Center is one of the greatest places in hockey history, and Montreal is an incredible city,” said Marty Walsh, executive director of the NHL Players’ Association. It’s going to be amazing to show games there, as well as at TD Garden, where we will show two games on Presidents Day, February 17. »
As for the reason for such a tournament in such a format, which for the moment replaces the previous eight-team World Cup, Gary Bettman was somewhat evasive, citing among other things the more limited number of players from other countries.
Russian players, absent from International Ice Hockey Federation competitions due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, will also be absent.
“We can only do what we can under the circumstances, and whether it’s this tournament or the World Cup, people are going to have opinions about what could have been done differently,” the NHL commissioner said. “But the time we’ve spent on this project has led us to believe that this is the best option at this time.”