The first 4 Nations Face-Off game was as electric as you could have asked for
The 4 Nations Face-Off kicked off on Wednesday, with Canada beating Sweden in a thrilling overtime contest. And from an overall standpoint, it had everything hockey fans were looking for in a big-game enviroment.
Canada’s Mitch Marner sealed the deal in overtime for Canada to come out on top of the first game of the 4 Nations Face-Off 4-3. The atmosphere was tremendous, with fans in Montreal chanting “Oh là là!” as Canada hit the ice.
After the game on Daily Faceoff Live, Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli shared some insight into how electric the Bell Centre truly was.
Tyler Yaremchuk: “Frank, one of the things I started this show by talking about was if you were one of the skeptics coming into this, we were like, “I don’t know how into it the players are, what are the crowds going to be like.” There was talk about ticket sales, all of that stuff. It was squashed almost before the puck drop, the way the Bell Centre was going when Mario Lemieux was introduced to come onto the ice, and then the way it went after the puck drop in Canada buries on that early power play, that was probably about as perfect of a start to this tournament as the NHL could have drawn up.”
Frank Seravalli: “I think you knew you were gonna get an electric Bell Centre crowd and I love the passion that they have. The boo’s for Auston Matthews, the roars for Mario Lemieux. There’s no environment like this in the NHL. I’m sorry to be so blunt to so many different fan bases. Tyler, you and I were sitting up here in the press box and we talked about this during the game. The reaction that you get from every sequence, how in tune they are with every game, every aspect of the game, it’s like a playoff game in so many other markets like in Edmonton or Toronto or somewhere else, but they do that all game long and they do that all season long here in Montreal.
“It’s just different here and that makes it a perfect place to host the tournament with the passion that 21,000 of them have. There was some talk heading into this about ticket sales. Gary Bettman, the commissioner, said today that the league had sold 110,000 tickets to this point. You knew selling a Canadian game in Canada wasn’t going to be difficult, especially not with U.S./Canada on Saturday either to wrap up the Montreal portion, but when it’s on this building every feature of its game presentation atmosphere, environment, the buzz is for real.”
Tyler Yaremchuk: “Like, I’ve never watched a game at the Bell Centre before and for this one, again, there was a part of that was like, ‘OK, am I gonna get the classic Bell Center experience that everyone’s been raving about and everyone I talked to has said to me?’ And it was like immediately apparent.”