The National Hockey League has delivered an incredible product with its 4 Nations Face-Off. As the United States and Canada prepare to meet Thursday night at TD Garden in Boston, more sports fans are interested in professional hockey than they have been in years.
The TV ratings have been through the roof. When the U.S. and Canada met Saturday night in Montreal, the ratings were higher than they had been for any game since the 2019 Stanley Cup Final between the St. Louis Blues and Boston Bruins. The ratings showed that the viewership peaked at 5.2 million viewers and an average of 4.4 million fans watched throughout the game.
The NHL went with this product instead of its usual All-Star fare. In recent years, the NHL had gone with a skills competition on the first day of the All-Star festivities and a 3-on-3 tournament featuring All-Stars from the league's four divisions.
To be frank, the 3-on-3 tournament based on the NHL's regular-season overtime format felt forced. It certainly was more competitive than the NFL's 7-on-7 flag football concept and the NBA's constantly changing All-Star game that has stars or broadcasters picking teams and playing shortened games that also involved the league's "rising stars."
All the NHL did was listen to its players who have been clamoring for a best-on-best tournament featuring the best players from the United States, Canada, Sweden and Finland. NHL players had not participated in the Winter Olympics since 2014 and had not had a best-on-best tournament since 2016.
When NHL commissioner Gary Bettman finally relented and gave the go-ahead for the 4 Nations Face-Off in place of the league's All-Star Game, this became a huge event. The quality of play combined with the political tension between the United States and Canada has made it Must See TV.
The NFL is a far bigger and more successful enterprise than the NHL. However, Roger Goodell's league could take some notes from the NHL on how to turn their current laughable Pro Bowl format into a compelling event.
To do so, the NFL would have to go old school and go back to its roots. It could turn the Pro Bowl into a competitive and hard-hitting football game between the best players in the AFC and the NFC. There was a time when the NFL held an All-Star game that featured the league's best players and they played to win.
It has been a long time since that happened. Instead of turning the game into a veritable vacation for its players. That's because nobody stands up and demands anything more.
In the early days of the NFL's Pro Bowl and the American Football League's All-Star Game in the 1960s, players were honored to be selected and coaches did not genuflect to the players. They demanded and got great effort and the fans who attended the games or watched them on television often got a great show.
Why should it be any different now? No sport talks more about the importance of winning and competing than the NFL. Yet, starters barely see any action across the league in the preseason and the caliber of play in the first month of the season is far below the standard seen during the rest of the season.
If it's because players are at greater risk now than they have ever been, that's simply not true. Rules are in place that prevent defensive players from delivering the most aggressive hits and nearly all head shots are penalized.
NFL players currently laugh and joke their way through the skills competition and flag football game that is the Pro Bowl. It has nothing to do with competitive football. Asking the best players in the league to put on helmets and shoulder pads and playing to win against their peers is not too much to ask. There are plenty of players who made it to the NFL because they played to win every game in their high school and college careers.
Asking them to do the same in a best-on-best format might actually appeal to the best players and coaches in the league, and it would give the sport a true showcase event.