NHL players haven’t faced off in a best-on-best international tournament since the 2016 World Cup of … [+]
The NHL’s ‘4 Nations Face-Off’ is one step closer to becoming reality.
Meeting with the media in Sunrise, Fla. on Saturday ahead of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and deputy commissioner Bill Daly confirmed that the tournament will run from Feb. 12-20, 2025 at Bell Centre in Montreal and TD Garden in Boston.
The format for the seven-game tournament will be a straight round-robin, followed by a championship game.
The first four games will be held in Montreal from Feb. 12-15. Then, the scene will shift to Boston for a double-header to close out the round robin on Presidents’ Day, Feb. 17 and the championship game on Thursday, Feb. 20.
The tournament will run in lieu of an all-star game in 2025. It will mark the first time that NHL players have squared off in best-on-best competition since the World Cup of Hockey in Toronto in 2016, which was won by Canada.
Canada, the United States, Sweden and Finland will be the participating nations in the 2025 event. Notably, the tournament does not include Russia, which remains sanctioned from participating in international hockey competition by the International Ice Hockey Federation, as well as the newly-crowned 2024 world champions from Czechia.
Bettman confirmed Saturday that ‘4 Nations Face-Off’ rosters will be comprised strictly of NHL players. Beyond the Russians, it would be difficult for any of the non-competing nations to build a competitive roster from their NHL talent pool, which is more limited that they’ll be able to draw from at when they return to the Winter Olympics in Italy in 2026.
2024-25 Salary Cap Set at $88 Million
Also on Saturday, the NHL confirmed that the salary cap ceiling will be set at $88 million for the 2024-25 season, a jump of $4.5 million from the 2023-24 level.
This is on track with the projection that Bettman offered heading into the 2022-23 season, and indicates that the league and players have returned to level ground following the financial challenges caused by the pandemic starting in 2020.
The $88 million ceiling is up slightly from the projection of $87.7 million that has been used by salary-information websites like CapFriendly.com through the year. It’s believed that final revenue numbers came out at…
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