How Canada can use its diversified offense to beat the United States at 4 Nations Face-Off

The United States and Canada are gearing up for what should be a hotly contested matchup to round out the Montreal portion of the 4 Nations Face-Off.

Both teams enter Saturday night with wins under their belt. Canada needed the heroics of Mitch Marner to beat Sweden 4-3 in overtime in the first game of the tournament, while the U.S. used strong performances from brothers Brady and Matthew Tkachuk to run away late to take down Finland 6-1 on Thursday night.

It sets up a crucial game between the two rivals, with both teams having the tools to come out on top.

Canada, which had four different goal-scorers in its win, will need all hands on deck to take down a very strong American squad. On Wednesday night, fans saw that all four lines were able to generate scoring chances, doing so in different ways. The depth the red and white have is what made them an obvious favorite heading into the tournament, and they’re going to have to put that on display if they want to head to Boston with two wins in their back pocket.

On Friday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Jon Goyens joined Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli to discuss how Canada’s diversified offense could be the difference against the U.S.

Jon Goyens: I think it’s very obvious they’re going to have to be very diverse in the way they’re going to try to attack. Early on, and you got some really good defenders in Sweden, they’re taking up a lot of space in the neutral zone…so it wasn’t going to be this firewagon hockey. Canada, knowing they’ve got a well-versed group, they know they’re probably going to have to place-and-chase. They’re going to have to embrace long stretches of o-zone play, cycle play, and that type of stuff. At times, it was just a meat-and-potatoes type of offense…they were actually getting a lot of their opportunities in a variety of ways.

You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…