Skater Faster, Make Elite Teams
By Hunter Marriott, MSc
Research and Development Consultant
The 4 Nations Face-Off is the first best-on-best tournament we’ve seen since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. In this upcoming tournament, Canada, the United States of America, Finland, and Sweden go head to head in a round robin format. Each international team consists of 13 forwards, 7 defensemen, and 3 goalies, each trying to prove their team is the most dominant. The rosters reflect the very best each country has to offer, considering various strengths and skills in the selection process. One of these skills is certainly skating ability, and we have set out to understand how important skating skills are in getting selected for this competition.
In a previous blog post, we discussed the influence of strong skating skills in the success of NHL players. Using NHL Edge data from the 2023-2024 season, we found that high speed bursts of 18+, 20+, and 22+ MPH have a strong correlation with getting more shots off and scoring more goals with R2 values up to 0.76 (where 0.5 is considered strong and 1 is a perfect correlation). High speed bursts are a better representation of skating abilities due to a higher chance of multiple occurrences rather than potentially a one time fluke of top speed. If we look back, NHL players that had at least one 22+ MPH burst throughout the season averaged more than double the amount of goals of those that had no 22+ MPH bursts, at 12.06 goals vs 5.24 goals. We were interested to see if the 4 Nations Face-Off rosters, the best players available to represent their respective countries, have superior skating speed and abilities compared to the rest of the NHL this season.
Using the 2024-2025 season NHL Edge data collected to date, we looked at the high speed bursts of the players on each of the 4 Nations Face-Off rosters. From the graph below, we see that all 4 teams average more 18+ MPH bursts per game than the whole of the NHL, which only averages 4.94 bursts per game. If we consider the fastest and most skilled teams to be the ones with the most high speed bursts per game (18+ MPH), we see the USA in first at 6.86/game, followed closely by Canada (6.68/game), then Sweden (6.29/game), and finally Finland (5.15/game). Based on the strong relationship between skating abilities and goals scored, this order unsurprisingly coincides with the current odds to win the tournament. Looking at the highest speed bursts (22+ MPH), Canada’s team averages over 4 times more bursts per game at 0.206 than the whole of the NHL at 0.048. It is clear that the skaters on each 4 Nations Face-Off rosters are above average skaters in the NHL, and that skating skills may influence the outcome of the tournament.
When separating by position, we continue to see similar trends to the entire rosters. For both forwards and defensemen, we see that each 4 Nations team is stronger in 18+ MPH bursts compared to NHL players playing the same position. Forwards show the same as the full roster with USA leading the way, however we do see a swap between the USA and Canada for speed of defensemen. In our previous post, we found that forwards have a stronger correlation between skating speed and scoring, meaning their skating skills may have more influence on the game than those of the defensemen. Defensemen however do tend to get more and higher danger shot opportunities with better skating skills.
Of the top 10 skaters with the most 18+ MPH bursts per game this season, 7 were eligible to compete in this tournament. 4 of the 7 are on a 4 Nations Face-Off roster. In the fastest speed category of 22+ MPH bursts per game, the top two athletes are Canada’s Nathan MacKinnon and Connor McDavid, each with 1.13 occurrences per game. This almost doubles the third best, Martin Necas, with just 0.61 22+ MPH bursts per game. MacKinnon and McDavid, uncoincidentally, are both regarded as some of the best players currently in the NHL and both named to the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament.
Hockey is a multi-faceted sport. In order to be the best you can be, all skills are important to hone. Skating may not be everything when it comes to team selection, but the stats show that not only do better and faster skaters get more scoring chances and goals, but they tend to get selected to represent at the highest levels. Skating skills certainly can’t be overlooked when it comes to a hockey player’s success. The 4 Nations Face-Off players have proved that putting in the work to become a better skater pays off.
References:
- https://edge.nhl.com/en/home
- https://sportsbook.fanduel.com/navigation/nhl?tab=4-nations-face-off