On the list of things American hockey fans were excited to see in the 4 Nations Face-Off, Matthew and Brady Tkachuk playing together was near the top. The two brothers delivered in Game 1, combining for four goals to lead the United States to a 6-1 win over Finland Thursday night in Montreal.
Coach Mike Sullivan actually did not have them on the same line to start the game, but eventually put them together on a line with North Chelmsford native Jack Eichel in the second period as he looked for a spark in a 1-1 game.
They certainly helped provide it. Matthew Tkachuk scored a power-play goal 15 seconds into the third. He and Eichel combined to set up Brady Tkachuk for his second goal of the game a couple minutes later. And then Matthew scored another power-play goal as the pile-on continued.
Matthew Tkachuk had a game-high eight shots on goal. He and Brady tied for a game-high nine shot attempts. Brady had a game-high eight hits, more than double any other player. Matthew was named the first star of the game, Brady the second. Simply put, they were menaces. It’s exactly what Team USA was hoping for, and what the other three countries feared.
With the win, in regulation, the U.S. now sits atop the group stage standings with three points. Canada has two after beating Sweden in overtime, Sweden has one, and Finland has zero. Next up is rivalry day on Saturday in Montreal, with Sweden facing Finland in the appetizer at 1 p.m. before the main course of USA vs. Canada at 8 p.m.
Here are some other notes and thoughts from the first two games of this tournament:
-- It wound up getting overshadowed by the Tkachuk takeover in the third, but the United States’ best player in the first two periods was 23-year-old Millis, Mass. native Matt Boldy. The Minnesota Wild’s budding star set up Brady Tkachuk for the Americans’ first goal to tie the game, and then gave the U.S. the lead late in the second with a great deflection on a Brock Faber point shot. Boldy, who spent two years at Boston College, is just a really smart player who does everything well. His forechecking helped create both of those goals. He forces turnovers. He goes to the front of the net. He plays good defense. Nationally, he may be one of the lesser-known players on this USA roster, but that could change quickly.
-- Another big positive for the U.S. was the immediate chemistry between Auston Matthews, Jack Hughes and Jake Guentzel on their other top line. Matthews and Hughes, in particular, looked like they had been playing together for years. That line created a bunch of scoring chances, but didn’t get rewarded for their efforts until early in the third period. Just 11 seconds after Matthew Tkachuk made it 3-1, Matthews set up Guentzel off the rush to put the game out of reach. A top six of Guentzel-Matthews-Hughes and Tkachuk-Eichel-Tkachuk, with both lines clicking the way they were by the end of Thursday’s game, gives the U.S. a chance to keep up with Canada’s high-powered offense.
-- You don’t see it in the clip above, and he didn’t get a point on the play, but Bruins defenseman Charlie McAvoy helped set up that Guentzel goal by standing up Artturi Lehkonen on an attempted zone entry and forcing the turnover that led to that rush the other way. McAvoy had a good game, posting a plus-2 with 19:45 time on ice while pairing with Zach Werenski on what was clearly Team USA’s top defense pairing. He was also a big part of a penalty kill that went 2-for-2, with only J.T. Miller getting more shorthanded ice time. Mike Sullivan actually changed up his other two pairs midgame, possibly because his original third pair of Noah Hanifin and Brock Faber was struggling a bit. Faber finished the game with Jaccob Slavin, while Hanifin was with Adam Fox. I wonder if we see Jake Sanderson draw into the lineup in place of either Hanifin or Faber on Saturday.
-- The United States’ first two power plays Thursday were not very good, but then they scored on their final two. The biggest change was Sullivan replacing Fox with Werenski as the quarterback on the top unit. Werenski picked up the primary assist on both power-play goals, and had three assists total in the game. He helped the unit get better zone entries and just did a better job moving the puck quickly when it was on his stick. The 27-year-old Blue Jackets star is having the best season of his career and is trending towards being a Norris Trophy finalist for the first time, and I would expect him to remain the PP1 QB in this tournament. That spot had become a question mark when reigning Norris winner Quinn Hughes was forced to withdraw from the tournament due to injury.
-- In Wednesday’s tournament opener, it looked like Canada was going to simply overwhelm Sweden early on, storming out to a 2-0 lead and holding the Swedes without a shot on goal for the first 15 minutes of the game. Sweden is a damn good team themselves, though, and once they finally settled in, they started chipping away, actually controlled play for much of the second and third periods, and ultimately forced overtime. Mitch Marner ultimately won it for Canada 6:06 into OT.
-- Speaking of that overtime, this tournament is doing a couple things I would like to see the NHL adopt. 1) A true three-point format: three points for a regulation win, two for an overtime/shootout win, one for an overtime/shootout loss, zero for a regulation loss. It makes those final minutes of a tied game more valuable, as it provides more incentive to try to end the game in regulation instead of just playing for overtime. 2) Ten minutes of 3-of-3 overtime, instead of the current five used in the NHL regular season. That Canada-Sweden overtime was awesome to watch, and we got an extra 1:06 of it instead of going to a shootout after five minutes. A couple players complained about being too tired, but that’s mostly because Canada was just sending their top stars over the boards every 45 seconds.
-- Brad Marchand scored Canada’s second goal. It was a great transition play by all five Canadians on the ice, with Marchand’s own backcheck helping to force a neutral-zone turnover that led to a quick up from Colton Parayko and a smooth entry pass from Seth Jarvis to create a 2-on-1. Brayden Point fed Marchand, who had just about a whole net to shoot at. While Montreal’s Bell Centre erupted as one for the goal itself, it was funny to hear a few boos mixed in when Marchand’s name was announced. Some rivalries transcend patriotism. Marchand played 10:43 in a bottom-six role, but he was active. In addition to the goal, he had four shot attempts, a hit, a takeaway, and a couple well-placed chirps as he helped turn up the temperature a bit. He also helped kill off Sweden’s lone power play in the game.
-- On the other side, Elias Lindholm also played a bit of a limited role as Sweden’s fourth-line center, logging 10:47 time on ice. I thought he had some good shifts, though. Sweden, who had last change for the game, started with Lindholm’s line matching up against Canada’s bottom six. But as the game went on, coach Sam Hallam started using Lindholm, Gustav Nyquist and Viktor Arvidsson in more of a tougher matchup role with some shifts against Canada’s top six and the likes of Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Sidney Crosby. Their role in the comeback, which was to try to slow those guys down after a blistering hot start, should not be ignored.
-- Speaking of Canada’s stars… man is that top power-play unit absurd. Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Sidney Crosby, Cale Makar, Sam Reinhart. All on the ice together. Good luck. Sweden, smartly, only committed one penalty in the game, but it took Canada just 12 seconds to score on that power play. McDavid down to Crosby, slick backhand pass across to MacKinnon, easy finish with Sweden goalie Filip Gustavsson frozen in place. It might be the greatest collection of talent anyone has been able to put on the ice at once since… I don’t even know when. The 1987 Canada Cup? Canada rolled out a power-play unit of Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Mark Messier, Ray Bourque and Paul Coffey in that tournament.
-- Crosby had three assists and looked awesome. It’s a shame that Penguins management is wasting the twilight of his career, because he’s still got it.
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