Led by the Tkachuks, USA is the 4 Nations’ Big Bully – and Canada should be worried

Matthew Tkachuk, Brady Tkachuk, Brock Faber and Jack Eichel

Credit: Feb 13, 2025; Montreal, Quebec, CAN; [Imagn Images direct customers only] Team USA forward Brady Tkachuk (7) celebrates with his teammates his goal against Team Finland in the third period during a 4 Nations Face-Off ice hockey game at Bell Centre. Mandatory Credit: David Kirouac-Imagn Images

MONTREAL – Some teams are perfectly engineered to play heel.

And it didn’t take long to figure out who the heel was at Bell Centre Thursday night when Team USA and Team Finland met for the 4 Nation Face-Off’s second round-robin game. Given the current political climate and attitudes toward U.S. President Donald Trump north of the border, it wasn’t a surprise to see the Montreal fans become Suomi supporters for a night, especially when the Finns have multiple current and ex-Canadiens.

It also didn’t take long to understand the Americans were ready to embrace the Big Bully status from the moment the puck dropped on their 6-1 victory. Within the first minute of the first period, bodies were flying. The biggest, strongest, meanest team in the tournament on paper asserted its dominance immediately, swarming goaltender Juuse Saros’ crease, with J.T. Miller starting a scrum. He was one of the players feeding off the boos.

“I think we like it,” Miller said. “Not politically, but just in the sense of, we know where we’re at in Canada. I think that fires us up more than anything. So it’s great.”

The Finns were equal to the U.S. physicality early on, none more than big defenseman and reigning Florida Panthers Stanley Cup champion Niko Mikkola. But their tenacity could only hold them in the game for so long – not when they were missing so many crucial blueline components in Miro Heiskanen, Rasmus Ristolainen and Jani Hakanpaa, and not when the Americans kept bludgeoning them with their forecheck.

Seeing that Brady Tkachuk was feeling it, having scored the Americans’ tying goal in the first period on a bank shot off Saros’ back, coach Mike Sullivan pulled the nuclear launch key from his pocket and paired Brady with brother Matthew midway through the second period, with Jack Eichel centering them. That bruising, skilled trio imposed its will. Matthew broke the dam early in the third and put the U.S. up 3-1 when he threw a why-not wrister from the point that deflected off Mikkola’s stick. Brady used a beautiful move in tight to undress Saros after taking a feed from Eichel for the Americans’ fifth goal. By the time the night was up, both brothers had scored twice. At 5-on-5, Brady and Matthew, respectively, led all players on either team with jaw-dropping expected goal rates of 87.07 and 85.61. Talk about tilting the ice.

Seeing the brothers play together brought to life a hypothetical that had tempted Sullivan when he first started visualizing his lines for the tournament.

“We put combinations together and haven’t had an opportunity to see it in real action, and the other aspect of it is the nature of the tournament – it’s not like there’s a lot of time to let these things play out,” Sullivan said Thursday night. “So we were going to watch and see what we liked and where maybe we could effect a little bit of change. I’m not going to lie, when I was thinking about the line combinations and having the discussions with our coaching staff, the conversation did come up about putting Brady and Matthew together. Those two players, not only are they great players, but they’re great teammates. I also think that it’s pretty cool when you have an opportunity to play with your brother and there might be some added motivation or some added inspiration to want to play.”

There sure was. Brady gushed after the game about how much it was a dream, or even better than a dream, to play best-on-best with his brother. Brady called it the highlight of his hockey life to date. But it was more than just fun: there’s a clear competitive advantage in a short tournament in relying on the brothers to quickly gel using the shorthand they’ve built over their entire lives together.

“What helps us is just the communication, pretty brutally honest with each other,” Matthew said. “If we wanted the puck in a certain spot, I was gonna tell him right away, and if he wanted it somewhere, he was gonna let me know. So the in-game adjustment was obviously good.”

Thursday night may have started with the Americans eating a storm of boos. But it ended with a quieted crowd, eating crow in the form of listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird over and over.

The Americans got the last laugh, and they couldn’t look readier for their epic tilt with Canada this Saturday night. The Canadians are built to win, boasting generational superstars, the best top-end skill in the tournament and incredible two-way forwards, but they aren’t mean. They’ve got fiery competitors in Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon and size and strength on the back end from Colton Parayko and Travis Sanheim, but their lineup isn’t constructed to go haymaker for haymaker with the brawny Americans.

Coach Jon Cooper has to consider bringing his nastiest player, Sam Bennett, out of the press box and into the fray Saturday night, because Canada had better be ready for a war. They’re the sport’s storied stewards, but the U.S. is the Cobra Kai to their Miyagi-Do. Team USA strikes first and shows no mercy.

“We’ve talked from day one about the importance of bringing a certain attitude and the importance of becoming a team and that talent alone isn’t going to win this thing,” Sullivan said. “There’s a certain pride in being an American, and I think there’s a certain swagger that we can bring to the game. That is reflective of maybe the attributes that we’ve all learned from our older generations.”

Old generations, new generations, name them and they will be amped up for the tilt on Saturday. It’s clear two games into the 4 Nations Face-Off that the intensity level remains sky high when teams play best-on-best for national pride. Can Canada match the Americans’ ferocity? With the Tkachuks leading the way, the task won’t be easy.

“It’s going to be the biggest game I’ve ever played in my career, so I’m really looking forward to that,” Brady said. “There’s a big buildup to it.”

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Led by the Tkachuks, USA is the 4 Nations’ Big Bully – and Canada should be worried

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