The Best Experiment in Sports Culminates Tonight. You Should Watch It.

The 4 Nations Face-Off is a best-on-best international tournament made up of NHL players from the U.S. , Canada , Sweden , Finland and Sweden .

Frida Ghitis : It's not the kind of breakthrough one expects to see emerge from the office of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman .

She says the 4 Nations has been some of the most intense hockey anyone has watched in years , much closer to an Olympic gold medal game or Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final than a typical set of NHL contests. The beauty of this particular tournament owes in part to the NHL 's prior shortcomings, Ghitis says.

Frida Ghitis : The 4 Nations hockey tournament has some juice from the rancid times in which we all live.

She says it's the spirit of the thing that matters and should inform executives in all sports.

The NHL pros will return to the Olympics for the 2026 Games in Milan , and the NHL will proceed with its more standard World Cup of Hockey format running two years after that.

Ghitis says sports fans love when the best players try to beat one another in international events.