The likelihood of a player representing the United States at the upcoming 4 Nations Face-Off was always low for the Philadelphia Flyers. However, they will at least have a representative behind the bench in John Tortorella.
The veteran bench boss, along with Penguins assistant David Quinn, was named as an assistant coach for the team and will be joined by John Hynes and Mike Sullivan, who were named assistant coach and head coach, respectively, earlier in the summer.
The 4 Nations Face-Off is essentially a replacement of the World Cup of Hockey but will only feature Canada, the United States, Sweden, and Finland, compared to the World Cup that also included Russia, the Czech Republic, Team Europe that consisted the best players from the remaining European nations, and Team North America that comprised the best Canadian and American players under the age of 23 at the time.
It is set to take centre stage between the 12th and the 20th of February in 2025 and games will be held at Montréal’s Bell Centre and Boston’s TD Garden in typical a round-robin format followed by one game eliminations for the medal rounds.
The 4 Nations Face-Off will represent the 5th international tournament where Tortorella has found himself behind the bench for the United States. He previously served as head coach for the 2008 World Championships team as well as the 2016 World Cup of Hockey team. Furthermore, he served as an assistant coach at the 2005 World Championships and 2010 Winter Olympics.
Since being hired ahead of the 2022-23 season, Tortorella has compiled a 69-71-24 record as Flyers head coach and has instilled new life and new culture into the team behind the bench. Across his 23 seasons as an NHL head coach, Tortorella is 742-612-37-156 with 2 Jack Adams Awards (2004, 2017) and the 2004 Stanley Cup on his impressive résumé. Tortorella is 9th all-time in NHL coaching victories and 2nd all-time among American-born coaches, only behind former Flyers bench boss Peter Laviolette.
For one of the few times in recent memory, the Americans stand a very good chance at taking home the gold as they will feature of the most star-studded lineups with the likes of Auston Matthews, Brady and Matthew Tkachuk, Quinn and Jack Hughes, Jack Eichel, Adam Fox, and the best complement of goaltenders out of Connor Hellebuyck, Thatcher Demko, Jeremy Swayman, and Jake Oettinger.
