Team Canada and Team USA will naturally gobble up the majority of the media attention here in North America heading into the 4 Nations Face-Off in February. But what makes the event even more compelling is that Sweden or Finland could well win it all and nobody would bat an eye. It’s the kind of statement Finland would love to make as a launching pad toward the 2026 Winter Games in Italy.
Advertisement The Finns have always been a tough out in international best-on-best hockey, and for these two events, they’re going to assemble arguably the country’s most talented lineup ever. General manager Jere Lehtinen also hopes to continue his country’s tradition of having tight-knit rosters that come together quickly. Finland has had a high degree of player buy-in and role-acceptance in the past, and Lehtinen doesn’t want that to change with a deeper NHL roster.
Lehtinen replaced Jari Kurri as Finland’s GM in the summer of 2014. He’s run the national team through IIHF world championships over the past decade as well as two Olympics , 2018 and 2022, but this is his first best-on-best event since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. “It’s been a while,” Lehtinen said.
He did go through the process of putting together a roster of the top Finnish players in late 2021 when the NHL was supposed to go to the Beijing Olympics but pulled out. So he’s not starting from scratch. “We were pretty far (down the road) as far as putting up our team and talking to the players about it.
