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4 Nations brings Wild locker room a friendly Sweden-U.S. rivalry: 'I would love to score on him'

6 December 2024Last Update :
4 Nations brings Wild locker room a friendly Sweden-U.S. rivalry: 'I would love to score on him'

ANAHEIM, Calif. — The best part of the NHL and NHL Players’ Association ensuring that rosters for February’s 4 Nations Face-Off would be announced more than two months before the so-called “best-on-best” tournament is there will be a two-month leadup of endless chirping.

That began in the Wild locker room Thursday — one day after Brock Faber and Matt Boldy were named to the United States’ roster and Filip Gustavsson, Joel Eriksson Ek and Jonas Brodin were named to Sweden’s.

If you’ve ever been to a Wild practice at TRIA Rink, you know there’s a daily competition between the shooters and Gustavsson. They love to score on him, and he gets sour when they do.

So naturally, Faber and Boldy can’t wait until that Feb. 17 USA-Sweden showdown at TD Garden, especially if Gustavsson gets the nod between the pipes over his Swedish sidekicks, Jacob Markstrom and Linus Ullmark.

“I would love to score on him. That would be a lot of fun,” Faber said after Thursday’s practice and before the Wild hopped on their chartered flight to southern California to begin a three-game road trip Friday night against the Ducks. “A lot more fun than scoring on him in practice.”

Added Boldy, “I’ve got to be so nice to him to keep his confidence up here, so it will be nice to shoot to score for once.”

The U.S. team, announced Wednesday, is stacked, and even though Wild GM Bill Guerin is double dipping in the same role with Team USA, that hardly meant Faber and Boldy were shoo-ins. Guerin has surrounded himself with a well-respected management team and coaching staff, so they had to earn it. Faber has been one of the biggest reasons the Wild have been the NHL’s best defensive team this season, and Boldy is on a 36-goal, 79-point pace.

A year ago, let’s be honest, Boldy would have had to play himself onto the team, especially after two years in a row of Guerin saying he wanted him to play with more “FU” in his game in the playoffs. But Boldy broke out last season, then followed it up by leading the World Championship in scoring.

Faber, who was the Calder Trophy runner-up last season, followed his brilliant rookie year with a terrific first two months of this season.

Boldy and Faber are well-decorated U.S. players and were teammates on the 2021 gold-medal-winning team at the World Junior Championship. Faber also played in the last Winter Olympics.

“Every time you have the privilege to wear the red, white and blue, it’s one of the coolest things in the world,” Faber said.

“Super excited about it,” Boldy said. “It never gets old.”

After a tremendous debut season for the Wild two years ago when he finished second in the NHL in save percentage and goals-against average to the Vezina Trophy-winning Ullmark, Gustavsson had a down year last year while dealing with a lot on and of the ice — a coaching change, injuries, pressure of being “the guy” for the first time and becoming a dad for the first time.

He represented Sweden at the World Championship and went 6-1 to help his country win bronze. This season, he’s leading the NHL with a 2.04 goals-against average and .929 save percentage.

“I’ve been privileged to be on the national team a few times now, and it’s always such an honor to be on the team,” Gustavsson said. “Sweden is always producing a lot of good goalies, and I knew I had to play my best to be on this roster. I’ve just been trying to play my game all year and we had some unfinished business last year at the world championships. So hopefully we can really, really play good there in February.”

It’ll be interesting to see which goalie Sweden taps in the tournament.

“Filip has been playing unbelievable in Minnesota, and Ullmark is a world-class goalie and coming off one year ago winning the Vezina,” Markstrom, the Devils’ goalie, said. “And myself, I feel like I’m really finding my game. Our job is to push each other. Obviously Filip, Linus and myself want to be in the net and play. We’re here to push each other.”

Gustavsson said he’s honored to be joined by Brodin, who he called one of the NHL’s most underrated defensemen, and Eriksson Ek, “who’s a machine.” Both players are currently out week-to-week, but Sweden “hopes and expects they’ll be available.”

If so, come February, they’ll be in Montreal and Boston playing hockey while the rest of their teammates are vacationing in the tropics or Mexico.

“Warm weather is great, but I’m a hockey player,” Faber said. “Hockey is my favorite thing to do, so I will definitely take this over going on a trip for break.”

Coach John Hynes, who will be on Mike Sullivan’s Team USA staff for the 4 Nations Face-Off and 2026 Olympics in Milan, is proud of his five representatives.

“You want to be able to have your players play in high-stakes environments,” he said. “It’s best on best for the countries that are there. I think that anytime your guys can get in those environments to play in big venues, big games, it’s good for your team.

“And then I think the other part, too, is you’re going in, you’re seeing how other guys are doing it. I mean, it’s all basically superstars in the tournament. So you’re seeing how other guys practice, how they work. I just think, even as coaches when you go to those events, you learn so much. You develop different relationships, but you see other people do things, see how other players go about their business. So I think it’s a great opportunity.”

Life without Eriksson Ek and Brodin

Playing without Eriksson Ek and Brodin will provide the Wild with their biggest test of the season so far. They are considered the Wild’s best defensive forward and defenseman, respectively.

“Yeah, it’s a challenge,” Hynes said. “I think going into every year, all 32 teams are going to experience this at some point. I think the teams that have strong collective effort, play a real structured game, play a smart game, it gives yourself a chance to be able to win every night. The other thing is, we feel like in the offseason, this was something we had talked about.

“How do we get our depth stronger? We know that every team is going to get their depth tested. We wanted to get bigger, stronger and more experienced, and we think we’ve done that. You’ve seen guys like (Devin) Shore, (Travis) Boyd, (Ben) Jones and now Reese Johnson. These guys were all experienced players. They play the game the right way and are highly competitive. That also gives the guys that are in the lineup opportunities to play in some different roles, but they still have to be true to their game.”

Jakub Lauko, out with a lower-body injury, skated on his own again Thursday morning, while defenseman David Jiricek, who has yet to debut since coming over from Columbus for Daemon Hunt and a pile of draft picks, was tried on the left side in Thursday’s practice. It’s an interesting quandary on how the Wild will get him into the lineup because he’s a right-shot defenseman and Hynes won’t want to take right-shot Zach Bogosian out to get him in. So when Jiricek debuts, either Bogosian or Jiricek may have to play the left side for Jon Merrill.

(Photo of Matt Boldy and Filip Gustavsson: Matt Krohn / USA Today)

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