With so many centers and too few spots, how 4 Nations stars will adjust to the wings

Not all rosters at the 4 Nations Face-off were created equally.

When we base our evaluations strictly on talent , there are two mega-powers at the top in Canada and the United States, a strong bronze-medal contender in Sweden and then, well, Finland.

If there is a common theme for all four squads, though, its emphasis on center depth.

Team USA and Finland each have seven players who regularly play down the middle.

Team Canada has six.

With William Karlssons injury, Team Sweden is down to five.

Advertisement That glut at the position means one thing: Quite a few everyday centers (and some of the biggest names in the sport) are going to play on the wings.

That isnt unique to this tournament.

Its not unique for any other tournament, really.

It tends to be par for the course a feature, not a bug.

What does that mean for the teams involved and the folks watching the games? We can start by looking back at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, the last time NHLers were involved in a best-on-best tournament.

Team Canadas championship squad had 10 centers.

The only true wingers on that roster were Brad Marchand and Corey Perry.

Sidney Crosby, Ryan Getzlaf, Jonathan Toews and Ryan OReilly only played center during the tournament, while Patrice Bergeron, Logan Couture, Matt Duchene, Steven Stamkos, John Tavares and Joe Thornton took reps on the wings.

With that group, Canada put out lines like Marchand-Crosby-Bergeron that came up clutch against Team Europe in the final.

And at points in the tournament, like Canadas semifinal against Russia, a star-powered second line of Tavares-Getzlaf-Stamkos helped generate key offense.

Tavares scored that goal more than eight years ago.

Both he and Stamkos are still productive NHL players, but theyre not competing in this tournament and are unlikely to play at the 2026 Olympics in Italy.

Getzlaf is part of the Department of Player Safety.

Crosby is the last remaining member of Team Canadas 2016 forward group.

No one is left from Team USA or Sweden.

Team North America, composed of the best Canadian and American players 23 and under, is a different story.

Connor McDavid, Sean Couturier and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins were all constants down the middle for North America; Nathan MacKinnon, Auston Matthews, Dylan Larkin, Jack Eichel, Vincent Trocheck and Mark Scheifele all shifted to wing at points.

Of those nine players, six will be competing in this tournament.

Advertisement Superstar-loaded lines are the norm at tournaments like this.

If MacKinnon and Crosby are going to get reps together for Canada, MacKinnon will likely have to shift to wing.

Jack Hughes and J.T.

Miller both have experience playing on the wing in the NHL, so they should be considered two of the more likely candidates to shift.

Mikael Granlund, who doesnt play a ton of center anymore at the NHL, will probably stick to playing wing.

So will Eetu Luostarinen, especially if Finlands coaches opt to keep him with a familiar face in Anton Lundell; the two are teammates on the Florida Panthers.

The more players are open to shifting away from their natural position, the more options a team has.

That obviously helps in case of injury, but also in different matchup settings.

With so many centers at a coachs disposal, teams arent as handcuffed to certain combinations or deployments.

With more natural centers on the ice, there will be more options to take the draw when someone is thrown out of the faceoff dot.

Coaches can also make tweaks for the faceoff depending on the matchup.

When MacKinnon and Nugent-Hopkins were on a line with Jonathan Drouin for Team North America, handedness factored into decisions for each faceoff based on the opponent.

Having a lineup filled with centers should also help boost a teams two-way game, which can be especially important in a best-on-best setting filled with high-octane superstar talent.

Playing center, you have a lot more responsibility down low in the zone, Stamkos explained.

Depending on what kind of system you play its a little different here than it was in Tampa Id say thats the biggest adjustment.

Not every center is Selke-caliber.

But even elite offensive threats can evolve into stronger defensive players, which weve seen from Jack Eichel and Matthews and, to a lesser extent, Hughes.

Advertisement Some systems essentially view centers as a third defenseman.

Centers usually are tasked with positioning themselves in the middle of the ice in their own zone, where they can focus on taking away passing and shooting lanes.

If youd ask a winger whos never played center before, its probably a different answer, Stamkos said.

I find myself in the middle of the ice more, where you can generate more speed and (get to) the underneath pucks.

Stamkos, though, is accustomed to switching between roles and not just on the international stage.

He played wing at times in Tampa Bay and has done the same this year in Nashville, often with OReilly as his center.

Take the clip below.

As the center, it was OReillys job to get back in his zone and support his defenders down the middle.

After Brady Skjei defended the initial rush, OReilly blocked a pass to stop a second-chance opportunity.

With that play, the center shifted the Predators from defense right back to offense.

When Stamkos is at center, as has been the case recently, the middle of the ice again becomes his primary responsibility.

Youre in different positions on the ice.

Youre not used to battling on the walls as much, Stamkos said.

That is one of the more noteworthy adjustments a center has to get acclimated to on the wing like Stamkos did in the clip below when he battled for possession in the corners.

OReilly, the center in that situation, skated around the circle and stayed more in motion.

There are more stop-and-start situations as a winger, where as the center you can try to generate more speed and maintain that speed, Stamkos said.

At the end of the day, if youre the first man back in the zone, that guy has to play center anyway, so everyone has had a taste of it.

Centers generally have to be strong skaters, ready to cover a lot of ice.

Having a roster filled with that skill can be an advantage.

But there is obviously a difference between straight-line speed and quick-twitch acceleration.

Advertisement The talent on these teams should help smooth the process.

Leon Draisaitl doesnt just play some games at center and others at wing.

The Oilers often move him up to McDavids wing in-game when they need an offensive boost.

That would be a challenge for some, but not for a pair of MVPs.

The fact that the two have so much familiarity with each other assists the process, too.

Just look at how fluid the two are in their movements in the clip below.

McDavid is playing center here and roves more toward the middle of the ice, while Draisaitl spends a lot of his time along the boards.

But theres still plenty of movement and free-flowing play within the zone.

Maybe most relevantly, coaching staffs have limited time to instill their system and even less than they did at the Olympics or World Cup.

Some players, including Team Canada forwards Brayden Point and Anthony Cirelli, have NHL games two days before the tournament begins.

That is what makes this all the more challenging to navigate.

Asking, say, Larkin to move off center for the Red Wings, with teammates whose tendencies he knows and in a system hes comfortable in, is one thing.

Asking him to do the same in a short tournament is something else.

The X-factor, of course, is that were talking about special players in a special environment.

Guys are obviously comfortable in their positions, but under those circumstances, youre willing to play whatever.

The majority of those guys are centers anyway, so I think that works in your favor a little bit, Stamkos said.

But guys are willing to do whatever at those types of tournaments, and when you have the quality of players that are going to be there, its a little easier.

(Top photo of Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and Sidney Crosby at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images).

This article has been shared from the original article on theathleticuk, here is the link to the original article.