Konecny, Sanheim and Ristolainen make Four Nations rosters, Flyers will be well represented

It’s now official — the Philadelphia Flyers will have three player representatives at the Four Nations tournament in February.

On Wednesday afternoon, Team Finland announced that defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen made their final roster. That was expected, given Ristolainen’s strong play and Finland’s relative lack of depth on the back end. But the inclusions of Travis Sanheim and Travis Konecny were far from sure things, given Team Canada’s enviable depth at both forward and defense.

Nevertheless, both players made it. The Travii will indeed be unleashed upon the hockey world at large come February.

The Four Nations Face-Off is an NHL-run tournament held in Boston and Montreal that will last from February 12 through February 20, involving all of Canada, Finland, Sweden, and the United States. It will be a round-robin tournament, with the two best-performing nations making it to a winner-take-all finale.

It’s also the first true “best-on-best” international tournament since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey (won by Canada), given the fact that NHL players were not permitted to participate in the Olympics in 2018 or 2022. The yearly World Championships technically count as “best-on-best,” but given the fact that they run simultaneous with the NHL playoffs, many of the top players in the world are unable to participate.

For the Four Nations tournament, however, all four teams will essentially be NHL all-star teams from their respective nations, with the only drawbacks for hockey fans being the non-participation of Team Russia (due to their country’s invasion of Ukraine) and Czechia.

Neither Konecny nor Sanheim were locks to make the Canadian team, and both were generally believed to be on the outside looking in when the 2024-25 season began. But they earned their spots via excellent starts — Konecny has 30 points in 25 games, and Sanheim is pacing for career-highs in every scoring category, in addition to taking on the heaviest workload of his NHL career.

It was enough to convince the Canadian braintrust, who nabbed both.

In addition to the three players, Flyers head coach John Tortorella will also participate in the tournament, as an assistant coach for Team USA, supporting longtime friend (and former assistant coach of his own) Mike Sullivan.