It’s been more than a dozen years since Adam Fox and Charlie McAvoy teamed up to lead the Long Island Gulls to the 14U title at the 2012 New York State Championships. And while these New York natives have gone on to establish their place among the elite players in the game, they still light up when they think back on that special season.
“I remember a lot about those Gulls days,” said Fox, who grew up in Jericho, N.Y., rooting for the N.Y. Rangers, a team that he has played with for the past six seasons. “You look back on those memories pretty fondly.”
Even as the years have passed, McAvoy can still name almost every one of his teammates and where their hockey careers took them.
“The crop that we had from Long Island was unbelievable,” recalled McAvoy, who grew up in Long Beach, N.Y., and played college hockey at Boston University before signing with the Boston Bruins. “We had some really good runs. We were really competitive for a bunch of kids from Long Island, which no one thought of as a hockey hotbed at all.”
Fox and McAvoy would reunite a few years later to help the U.S. win a gold medal at the 2017 IIHF World Junior Championship before eventually becoming cornerstones of two of the NHL’s Original Six teams. This past summer they became part of another original six when they were among the first U.S. players named to compete at the NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off.
The U.S. begins the 4 Nations Face-Off Thursday night against Finland (ESPN, 8 p.m. ET) in Montreal.
“The last time I played with Adam was at World Juniors, and we won a gold medal. So, we have a good track record,” McAvoy said.
The full roster was announced on Dec. 4 and features what many consider to be the finest collection of American hockey stars ever assembled, including the brothers Matthew and Brady Tkachuk.
More than just these biological brothers, the U.S. roster represents another kind of brotherhood as most of these players have played together at some point in their illustrious careers either at a USA Hockey Player Development Camp or with a U.S. National Team.
Of the 23 players on the U.S. roster, 15 are products of USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program. The bonds and familiarity forged in Ann Arbor and Plymouth, Mich., over the years will play a crucial role as the team will look to come together quickly in the short tournament.
“You go through a lot of the similar things and you’re with each other for two years and you become extremely close,” said Auston Matthews, who played at the NTDP from 2013-15 before being drafted by the Toronto Maple Leafs. “I’ve had a lot of really great memories there and we had a really great group of guys, so I’m looking forward to reconnecting with a lot of them and playing with each other again.”
With the NHL already committed to sending its players to the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, the 4 Nations Face-Off will be something of a precursor to what hockey fans can expect to see when the puck drops in Milan, Italy.
“With the Winter Olympics coming up, that’s definitely what everyone is really excited for, and this is a pretty good steppingstone leading into that,” said Jack Hughes, who was the No. 1 pick of the New Jersey Devils in 2019 after breaking the all-time points record (228) at the NTDP.
For the Tkachuk brothers, this will mark the first time they’ve been able to play on the same team in a tournament since they were youngsters growing up in St. Louis. They did play together at the 2023 NHL All-Star Game in Sunrise, Fla.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to represent the country and wear the USA jersey, so I’m super excited for it,” said Matthew Tkachuk, who was one of the first six players named during the Stanley Cup Final where his Florida Panthers beat the Edmonton Oilers.
“I’ve actually been dreaming about playing at this type of stage for my country for forever, so I know it’s an even bigger dream to compete with Brady and hopefully have a lot of success and ultimately make USA a hockey country. It was really cool when I got the call during the Finals about it, and I’m just really looking forward to competing and competing with Brady.”
Brady is looking to build off his performance at the 2024 IIHF Men’s World Championship where he led the U.S. with seven goals on the way to a fourth-place finish.
“Whenever you have a chance to represent your country, no matter what tournament it is, it’s always an honor and a privilege,” said Brady, who is one of four NHL captains on this year’s roster. “You always go in and want to win gold in whatever we do.”
The brothers will also be following in their father’s footsteps of representing the U.S., in international competition. Keith Tkachuk is one of three American players (Chris Chelios and Hilary Knight) who have played in four Olympic Winter Games and was also a key member of the U.S. squad that rallied to beat Canada at the 1996 World Cup of Hockey.
That victory has long been viewed by many in the hockey world as the catalyst for the growth of the game among the current generation of American players, serving as their inspiration the way the 1980 Olympics inspired the elder Tkachuk and his teammates who have been hailed as the “greatest generation of American hockey players.”
“The game has really evolved big time, and it keeps getting better now with today’s players,” Keith Tkachuk said. “The skill levels are on a different level than you’ve ever seen.
“It’s only going to continue to get better, and it’s going to be harder to make these teams, and that’s a good thing for USA Hockey.”
Since that 1996 victory, the U.S. has come up short in the last two tournaments that had all NHL players available for selection, but it does have two Olympic silver medals (2002 and 2010) to its credit. In addition, the Americans have struck gold six times at the IIHF World Junior Championship. All but four members of this current U.S. squad have World Juniors experience, and seven have won gold medals.
The 2016 World Cup did not go as the U.S. had hoped, losing its three round-robin games. However, one silver lining that emerged from that tournament was the play of several Americans who competed for Team North America, a collection of 23-and-under players from the U.S. and Canada. Six players from that squad will wear the U.S. jersey this time around, including Jack Eichel, who is determined to push the U.S. to the top in the international hockey arms race.
“There’s a lot to prove for us as USA Hockey,” the North Chelmsford, Mass., native said. “With the way the U.S. National Development Program has been producing players lately and where we feel we are as a country, you look at the talent pool in the last however many years in the NHL, for a while it was Canada on a pedestal by themselves and we’ve closed that gap. This is a great opportunity to prove that.”
General manager Bill Guerin, who was a member of the 1996 World Cup team, knows that with the great expectations comes an even greater pressure to produce.
“It’s not just something that we hope to do, it’s something that we expect now,” Guerin said. “Since ’96 there’s been more wins … so the expectations are much higher. This is as good as it’s ever been, but the thing we have to do now is win. We don’t want to just talk about how good we are or how deep we are, we want to be able to start talking about the wins that we have.”
A version of this story ran in the 2025 January/February Issue of USA Hockey Magazine.
4 Nations Roster 
NHL 4 Nations Face-Off Info 
4 Nations Face-Off Insider
Source: usahockey.com