4 Nations Face-Off: Can Team USA Take it All?
At a Glance
- Overview of the 4 Nations Face-Off Series
A multi-part series covering the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament - Fun Facts about Team USA
Explores a few fun facts you might not know about Team USA - Updates on our Summary Statistics
What are the summary stats saying about Team USA? - Deep Dive on Team USA
Explores offence, goaltending and experience - This Week's Prediction
Updates our prediction based on new findings and analyses from this week
Overview of the 4 Nations Face-Off Series
This series explores the teams in the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament, with the end goal of predicting who will win the tournament. Our last newsletter focused on Team Canada: 4 Nations Face-Off: Will Canada Beat the USA? If you didn't get a chance to read it and want a quick catch-up, we've packaged it all up in a short video.
To predict who will win the tournament, we're analyzing snapshots of player data from the 2024-2025 season through different contexts, such as offense, goaltending and physicality.
In this week's edition, we'll focus on the final team in the tournament: Team USA.
Fun Facts about Team USA
The USA is gearing up for the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament, bringing together a roster rich in talent and experience. Before we dig into the data, however, we wanted to explore some of USA Hockey's fun facts about Team USA.
- Leadership: The roster features four NHL captains and ten alternate captains, underscoring the leadership depth within the team.
- International Experience: Twenty-two players have previously represented the U.S. in top international competitions, collectively earning 47 medals, including 20 golds.
- Stanley Cup Champions: Three players on the roster have hoisted the Stanley Cup, bringing championship experience to the squad.
- Coaching Expertise: Head Coach Mike Sullivan, who has led the Pittsburgh Penguins to multiple Stanley Cup victories, brings a wealth of experience and a winning mentality to Team USA.
Further, there are some notable family ties on the team. That is, the team includes the Tkachuk brothers (Matthew and Brady) and the Hughes brothers (Quinn and Jack), adding an interesting dynamic to the roster.
Family Ties
The Tkachuk brothers (sons of former NHL star Keith Tkachuk), Matthew and Brady, are set to bring their dynamic and physical energy to Team USA in the upcoming tournament. According to the NHLPA, the 4 Nations Face-Off marks a significant milestone as it will be the first time Matthew and Brady play together for Team USA in a major international tournament. Sportskeeda adds that while they have competed against each other in the NHL, this tournament offers a unique opportunity for the brothers to showcase their synergy on the same team.
The Hughes brothers, Quinn and Jack, also bring a great chemistry and individual talent to the ice. The Hughes family has a rich hockey heritage, with their father, Jim, having an extensive background in coaching and development, and their mother, Ellen Weinberg-Hughes, a former U.S. women's national team player. Their younger brother, Luke, also plays in the NHL.
Quinn, the captain of the Vancouver Canucks and a 2024 Norris Trophy winner, is known for his exceptional skating and playmaking abilities, while Jack, a dynamic forward for the New Jersey Devils, set a franchise record with 99 points in the 2022–23 season. This tournament marks their first time playing together since the 2019 IIHF World Hockey Championship, and their complementary skills—Quinn's defensive prowess and Jack's offensive creativity—are expected to make them a formidable duo for Team USA.
All told, the two sets of brothers add character to an already strong Team USA.
Updates on our Summary Statistics
Since we started analyzing the teams in the tournament, we're seeing consistency at the highest level. For example, below is a recent snapshot of the summary statistics for the four teams involved in the tournament. For Team USA, we've consistently seen:
- Strong offense, but it's second to Canada
- The most physical of all of the teams
- Strong goaltending – at least from one of their goalies
Canada was the strongest competitor from the above, but this week we saw Canada slip slightly in physicality and continue to remain lower in the goaltending ranking. For Team USA, you can clearly see that Connor Hellebuyck remains at the top of the ranking, with Jake Oettinger and Jeremy Swayman dispersed across the other goaltenders.
However, both Canada and the USA have Stanley Cup experience among their goaltenders.
Deep Dive on Team USA
When we jumped into the data, here's what we discovered about Team USA.
- They have a well-rounded team with a lot of leadership and balance across age and experience.
- There is some unique character to the team (e.g., two sets of brothers and heavy on the captains/alternate captains).
- They have the highest-ranking goalie in the tournament in Connor Hellebuyck.
- They have a higher proportion of older, lower point-producing players.
So, what does all this mean?
The numbers show that Team USA have a great team, and it will be a tight game between them and Canada. According to Covers, the odds between the USA and Canada are tied.
As we've said from the beginning, any game between the USA and Canada will be close and full of pride and grit.
Team USA Power BI Dashboard
To help with our deep dive on Team USA, we built a Power BI dashboard. The dashboard comprises three reports:
- Offense – represented through Point Production
- Goaltending – showing GAA and Save Percentage
- Experience & Point Production – showing the relationship between Age and Points
Let's jump in!
Offense
In the first report, we have two Slicer controls and two Line and stacked column charts. The Slicer controls filter specific positions and players. The Line and stacked column charts visualize Points for specific players, along with Goals and Assists. The second chart shows Age versus Points.
We only excluded goalies from this report, which shows a strong offense and a d-line that can move the puck up the ice. Also, several players are putting up solid goals and assists, e.g., Jake Guentzel, Brady Tkachuk, Matthew Tkachuk, Matt Boldy, and Dylan Larkin. Further, Team USA has deep playmaking skills led by Jack Eichel, Jack Hughes, Zach Werenski, and Quinn Hughes.
What also stood out to us from the above report is the high number of Points across the range of players. So, a good range of players (save for the older ones) are achieving strong point production.
Goaltending
The second report includes a Slicer control and two Line and stacked column charts. The Slicer filters goalies, and the two charts measure Age versus GAA and Age versus Save Percentage.
The story here is that Connor Hellebuyck is the most senior of the goalies (at 31 years of age) and is also the top-ranked goalie in the tournament. Goaltending is relatively tight across the teams if you factor in each team's three goalies, so if Team USA goes with Swayman or Oettinger, look to the other teams to adjust to try and take advantage of the change.
As we said last week, Team Canada is statistically weaker in the crease, but comes with some Stanley Cup experience.
Experience
And lastly, we wanted to see who was above the Average Points line (which was 31 at the time of our data pull), so we created a Scatter chart to plot Points by Age.
We've mentioned this before, but you don't want players clustered towards the bottom right (older players with lower point production); you want balance across experience and production. Team USA has an interesting spread of players across age. However, they also have five players towards the bottom right of the plot, and a (negative) correlation (black dashed line) translates into a moderate number of older players who are lower point-producing players. We would interpret this as players who will bring experience to their roles such as Jaccob Slavin.
That said, you can't deny the presence of players above the average line in the plot. There is strength there with a strong dash of youth. So, this team will be fun to watch.
So, we do see good things when it comes to Team USA. Even though this is the All-Star break and games typically don't get too physical, this team has the tools to get down and gritty and can also put the puck away.
This Week's Prediction
So, does any of the above shift our last prediction?
No, we still think that Canada has the strongest offense out of all the teams and that their goaltending is under-rated. Given, the USA and Canada will be close when they play. And it will get nasty. But, we think Canada will take it by a hair.
Thus, our prediction is still as follows: 1) Canada, 2) USA, 3) Finland and 4) Sweden.
Want more? Check out our quick-hit video on YouTube!
Summary
In this week's newsletter, we explored the final team in the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament. We've now covered all of the teams in the tournament at a high level. (You can find coverage on the other teams here.) We explored some of the fun facts for Team USA and then did a deep dive on their offense, goaltending and experience.
Now that we've explored all of the teams separately, our next newsletter will walk through a comparative analysis of all teams side-by-side and start to build a predictive forecast of who will win the tournament.
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