The marquee matchup for the 4 Nations Face-Off final is what we’re getting as the tournament comes to a close on Thursday night at TD Garden in Boston (8 p.m. ET; ESPN, ESPN+). The United States and Canada will meet for the second time in five days for the first men’s hockey best-on-best championship between the two nations since the 2010 Olympic gold medal game, which was clinched by Canada thanks to Sidney Crosby’s overtime goal.
“It’s a Game 7, right?” U.S. forward Jack Eichel told reporters. “It’s for everything. You’re going to see desperate hockey. You’re going to see everything you saw in the first game and more, I imagine. It’ll be great.”
It’s unlikely that the Tkachuk brothers are cooking up another fight-filled start to a game following the three-fights-in-nine-seconds opening to Saturday’s round-robin matchup — a 3-1 winby the Americans. But the intensity and temperature will ratchet up as the two teams vie for an international …