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The Coaches Room is a regular feature throughout the 2024-25 season by former NHL coaches and assistants who turn their critical gaze to the game and explain it through the lens of a teacher.

In this edition, Craig Johnson, a former assistant with the Anaheim Ducks and Ontario of the American Hockey League and development coach with the Los Angeles Kings, writes about how coaches will prepare their players for the upcoming 4 Nations Face-off, an international tournament featuring teams made up of only NHL players from Canada, Finland, Sweden and the United States to be held Feb. 12-20 in Montreal and Boston.

Beginning Monday, the coaches for the 4 Nations Face-Off will have a limited amount of practice time to get their teams ready to play their first games. Team Canada and Team Sweden will have two days of practice before playing the tournament opener at Bell Centre in Montreal on Feb. 12 (8 p.m. ET; MAX, truTV, TNT, SN, TVAS). Team United States and Team Finland will have three practice days before playing the next night (8 p.m. ET; ESPN+, ESPN, SN, TVAS).

In those two or three practices, the coaches will have to do some teaching. Slowing things down to go over defensive zone coverage, the penalty kill or the power play will be crucial to each team's success.

As far as implementing systems, some of the teams have players who have played for their national program before. Players from Finland and Sweden might go in and have a good idea what their system is already and how they want to play. Some of them have played together at the IIHF World Championship, a similar system growing up and throughout their development. They'll probably be able to settle a little more quickly into how they want to play, so they might be confident in how they play, and, through their structure, that could help them.

The United States and Canada have been watching and observing their players and how they have played not only in the NHL but the World Championship last May.

Coaches are not going to assume that players can play any particular situation, but they will know who they feel can handle it from watching them throughout the year. Coaches and their assistants have already created their neutral-zone package, their defensive-zone package, etc. Getting their power-play and penalty-kill units together and getting them familiar with each other will be important in such a quick tournament.

The main thing when you look at the players who they're bringing is there's so much skill. This is the first time since the World Cup of Hockey 2016 that's going to be best against best, so if you're coaching any of these teams, you're going to say, "You know what? We need to let these guys play too and let them be who they are. We want to play a fast, up-tempo style where we're going pressure pucks in all zones."

It's going to be fun hockey, for sure.

The United States is going to have the skill in their defensemen with players who can get up and down the ice such as Quinn Hughes, Adam Fox and Zach Werenski. Canada has more skill at forward, but then, with Team USA bringing in players like Matthew Tkachuk and Brady Tkachuk, they're going to bring guys into the fight with the way they play.

The way NHL teams play now, they're pressuring pucks. Everybody has played that way in the past, so I don't think that's going to any problem.

It's more about pressure. It's about being above the puck. It's about being first off the boards and making sure you're on the right side of the puck both offensively and defensively.

There might be some difficult decisions with lineups and playing time for the goalies because every game will be important. Each team will play three games in the round-robin format and the teams with the best two records will advance to the one-game final.

Going in, you'd love to give everyone a chance to play, but at the same time, because of the importance of each game, if you get a goalie who's playing really well, you might have to ride him throughout the tournament. For the United States, it may be Connor Hellebuyck's net to lose, while determining who will be the No.1 goalie for Canada may be tough.

When you look at leadership, all the teams are made up of a lot of captains and alternate captains. The United States and Canada have great leadership but having someone like Sidney Crosby for Canada, who has played so many big games on the world stage, will definitely help players who are experiencing such a big tournament for the first time.

I'm sure any of the players on the teams will tell you that any time you get to represent your country is an honor. When I played for the United States at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics, we had a longer time to prepare, and we were set in our lines and things like that.

The thing you might not realize heading into a tournament like that is when you're playing a team like Finland -- that's who we lost to in the quarterfinals -- you're going over there as a young, kind of cocky kid and all the sudden you're playing against these veteran players who know the system and have played for their country many times. We were kind of overwhelmed with how they good they were and how they checked.

So, as you go into a tournament such as the 4 Nations Face-Off, you're thinking. No. 1, you want to get off to a good start. No. 2, you're fighting for one of those top two spots, so there's not much room to try too much and move players around a lot. You need to go with what you believe in. Teams have to be ready to play right away and your adjustments are going to be very subtle.