2025 NHL 4 Nations Face-Off Final Predictions: USA vs. Canada

Saturday night in Montreal was the appetizer. Thursday night's championship game is the main course.

The top two teams at the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off will hit the ice in Boston to determine pre-Olympic bragging rights and momentum ahead of the Winter Games in Milan, as the United States takes on Canada in the grand finale of the tournament.

Will the USA complete the sweep over its neighbors to the north? Or will Canada get a matter of revenge and win the 4 Nations away from home?

The B/R NHL staff looks ahead to the big game and will provide predictions.

Got your own take on the tilt? Sound off now in the comments section of the B/R app!

The United States was my pick at the start of the tournament, and I am going to stick with them.

The injury situation on defense is a concern, as is the return of Cale Makar for Canada, but I still can not get past the goaltending matchup and what should be a decisive Team USA advantage with Connor Hellebuyck vs. Jordan Binnington.

Both of these teams are pretty evenly matched overall. Both have high-end superstar talent at forward, deep lineups, and No. 1 defensemen throughout their blue-line groups. Both can play a variety of styles. But goaltending is the ultimate X-factor. Anytime you are in a one-game situation, I will side with the better goalie. That is the United States.

Prediction: USA 4, Canada 2

-Adam Gretz

It will be really difficult for the United States and Canada to live up to the performance both teams displayed Saturday night in Montréal, and getting a matchup in the Four Nations Face-Off title game would seem like the one way to be able to do so. The stakes are higher, the game will be in Boston and the United States has to beat Canada again to make its Saturday night win hold up as far as history goes.

But there are some problems. Charlie McAvoy is out. Matthew Tkachuk is hurting. Auston Matthews was hurting, too. And just about everyone’s pets’ heads were falling off by the time they lost 2-1 to Sweden on Monday.

Sure, there’s an outside chance they could get Quinn Hughes into the mix if another defenseman falls ill or makes a wrong turn at Albuquerque, but limping into the game against Canada—which has a lot of pride to make up for after the loss as well as potentially having Cale Makar back in the lineup—is, to say the least, ominous.

A healthy Makar and a very motivated Canadian team with Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon eager to stick it back to their rivals on their home ice is the exact right kind of mathematics to make it happen. Even if Jordan Binnington slips up a little like he did, having Makar back should more than make up for it.

Canada for the title it is. 

Prediction: Canada 3, USA 1

-Joe Yerdon

The call-and-response nature of this most recent iteration of the Canada-USA rivalry is the beauty of the thing. The fights, of course, but also the ebbs and flows as the two have played other teams in the tournament. 

Team USA didn’t necessarily have to improve—it had already punched its ticket to the championship game by the time it faced Sweden. It needed to rest hurting stars like Auston Matthews and Matthew Tkachuk. 

Team Canada, however, had a few things to clear up, and it did. The defense looked considerably stronger with Cale Makar in the mix, and Brandon Hagel had the most hype response to the fights initiated by the Americans and born in a pre-game group chat.

"I think we’re out there playing for the flag, not the cameras. That’s a part of Canada that we have in there," Hagel said. "We don’t need to initiate anything. We don’t have any group chats going on. We’re going out there playing our game and then giving it everything and doing it for our country. We’re just going to play as hard as we can and do it for the flag."

USA’s strength had been its defense, marked by Charlie McAvoy’s best hockey game in arguably a year. McAvoy being out with an injury and infection is brutal, and it’s looking like Quinn Hughes likely won’t be flying to Boston as a replacement, although there’s still a chance.

The USA still has the best goalie in the world in Connor Hellebuyck, and it still has that shutdown defense in Jaccob Slavin and Brock Faber. But Canada’s offensive firepower, defensive improvements and hunger following Saturday’s loss will prevail.

Prediction: Canada 2, USA 1

-Sara Civian

Back at the 2010 Winter Olympics, the United States beat the Canadians in round-robin play. It was a huge momentum boost for the Americans and lifted them to the gold-medal game.

But it didn't end well for the red, white and blue.

Fast forward to 2025, and the scenario has played out similarly: the Americans winning the round-robin game and meeting Canada again in the final.

The pick here is Canada gets it done again.

Normally, teams love to roll four lines and three-pairs on defense. But in a single winner-take-all game, you put your best players out there and ride them. So expect to see a lot of Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid and Cale Makar taking multiple shifts for head coach Jon Cooper. If Canada isn't getting anything from its fourth line like Saturday night, Cooper will have no hesitation to go to his big players often.

If there's one thing we've learned—or in this case, relearned—it's that Crosby will do whatever it takes to win. It's apparent when he's wearing a Pittsburgh Penguins jersey and its even more apparent when he dons the Maple Leaf of Canada on his chest.

Meanwhile, the USA has the advantage of being on home ice and has last change, but they're also a beat-up squad. We know Charlie McAvoy will miss Thursday's game. How much has the tourney taken out of the Tkachuk brothers and Auston Matthews?

Whatever happens, we know it will tight and it will be intense. May the best hockey country win.

Prediction: Canada 3, USA 2

-Lucky Ngamwajasat

What a difference a week makes.

Or, in this case, five days.

Lest anyone forget, this isn’t the first time the United States and Canada have faced off twice in a high-profile hockey tournament with NHL players.

The historians out there would remind us that it also happened in 2010.

Back then—when Sidney Crosby was still in his early 20s, Connor McDavid was still in his early teens, and Connor Bedard was still in his early days of elementary school—the Americans created an international stir with a 5-3 preliminary round victory at the Vancouver Olympics.

That was on February 21.

But what the “biggest win since the Miracle on Ice” crowd laments is that the same teams played at the same venue on February 28, and, well…let’s just say it ended a little differently.

Which brings us to 2025.

The U.S. chucked the friendly rivalry out the window with a 3-1 round-robin victory on Saturday at the Bell Centre, sending 20,000 or so Canadians into a cold Montreal night with just one word resonating in their tariff-addled minds:

Revenge.

Turns out the opportunity for it comes two days earlier at a less hoser-friendly venue.

And given the angst created last weekend, the vigor with which Team Canada slapped down Finland, and the reality that the U.S. hasn’t taken a podium step above their neighbors since World Cup 1996, it’s a given it’ll be the crowd in Boston that leaves unhappy this time around.

There’s too much talent. There’s too much experience. 

And now, there’s too much motivation.

Prediction: Canada 4, USA 1

-Lyle Fitzsimmons