United States players hungry, motivated after 4 Nations Face-Off OT loss

BOSTON -- The United States players skated off the ice slowly, in some cases gingerly, as Canada’s players embraced and celebrated. They unfastened their chin straps, removed their helmets, the final gestures of a 10-day tournament that had captured their hearts and had them believing they could win.

They nearly did.

But instead of being the ones celebrating, the ones with gold medals around their necks, swaying to their country’s national anthem on the TD Garden ice on Thursday night, the U.S. was relegated to second best, yet again.

“This sucks,” U.S. forward Brady Tkachuk said. “I thought this team deserved more.”

And that was the rub, the idea that this was the U.S. team that was going to beat Canada.

This was the team that was finally going to break through, to lift the monkey off their back, to exorcise their demons, to finally, finally vault themselves over the team that always somehow seems to come out on top.

They didn’t, leaving Connor McDavid alone in the slot to do Connor McDavid things, putting the puck top-shelf on Connor Hellebuyck at 8:18 of overtime for the game- and tournament-winning goal in the championship game of the 4 Nations Face-Off for the 3-2 win on Thursday.

“We had looks,” forward Dylan Larkin said, of overtime. “Such a fine line. Just a great hockey game, but very disappointing to come back in here with nothing.”

This might well have been the most talented team the U.S. had ever put together, with skill and stifling defense, with speed and tenacity and feistiness. And still, at the end, it was the Canadian hockey players who emerged, a smidge better in the end.

But the U.S. came out of the tournament proud, if defeated, with hopes for what’s ahead.

“There’s a lot of disappointment, but I’ve played for USA Hockey a lot, represented my country a lot in this game and been on the disappointing side a lot,” Larkin said. “To be this disappointed, but also there is pride. I’m proud of our group and how guys battled, battled for each other, how we came together so quickly. … I’m just so proud to be a part of this group.”

He wasn’t alone.

When Tkachuk emerged from the dressing room after regulation, headed for overtime, he firmly believed that the U.S. would score, that the victory would be theirs.

“Honestly, I was convinced we were going to win,” he said. “Just everything happens for a reason. There’s a reason why we didn’t win tonight. Maybe in a year’s time it goes the other way.”

Amidst the disappointment, that is the hope for the Americans: That they are positioned to do this again next year, when the NHL heads overseas to the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics. That they were so fractionally close to Canada that one moment different, one shot different, they would have been labeled the best of the best.

“It meant a lot, put the USA in the forefront of hockey,” Hellebuyck said. “We have a great team in here and it sucks to end like that.”

They were left with the sadness and the what ifs, with the yearning to have written an alternate ending to the one they faced as the clock turned from Thursday to Friday.

“I feel like we just -- of course deserved a different result,” Tkachuk said. “I think everybody in this room gave 100 percent. Obviously, that’s really disappointing when you don’t get rewarded for sacrificing your body for the guy next to you.

“I think this year, this moment, can really motivate us going into next year. But I think the first emotion you come up [with] is disappointment, sadness, and I thought we deserved a different result.”

This tournament will do a tremendous amount for USA Hockey, whether in the kids it will inspire to take up the game, the fans it has won among groups that never considered hockey before, in the players who -- as Larkin pointed out postgame -- have not always embraced playing in the World Championships the way they might.

That much is clear.

But at some point, the U.S. has to win in the final, to take the crown from Canada, which it has not done since 1996, when the Tkachuk on the ice was Keith and not Brady or Matthew.

It was supposed to be this year, this tournament.

It wasn’t. Not this team. Not this time.

They had done, again, what they did in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, beating Canada in the round-robin, as they had Saturday in Montreal at Bell Centre, before falling when the medal was on the line.

Still, they were heartened.

“I think we left absolutely everything out there,” Brady Tkachuk said. “Just the sacrifice that we had for each other -- I know it was a 10-day tournament, but it felt like we’d been playing together for this whole year. This is such a close group. This group is something special and I know we’re going to have a lot of success down the road.”

This team is lucky. It won’t have to wait nine years for the next best-on-best tournament, as the group had to after the disappointment of the World Cup of Hockey 2016 when the U.S. did not make it to the knockout stage. That, though, was a very different kind of regret, one of not measuring up to the other participants, let alone Canada.

This American team should be, largely, the same. It should be more ready and more prepared, with another year of dreaming and development and want. Only two players -- Brock Nelson and Chris Kreider -- are older than 31, positioning the U.S. well for the Olympics and, beyond that, the World Cup in 2028.

They know how close they were. They will be waiting.

“Hockey has taken a huge step in the U.S., Canada, around the world right now and I think that's a testament to all the guys that played in it, especially these two teams here,” defenseman Zach Werenski said. “For us it just makes us hungrier. We know now that we're neck and neck with Canada. We expect to be in those games with them and expect to win. I think that's exciting for this group. it gives us a lot of confidence that our time is coming, our time is now. It's exciting.”