Rasmus Andersson projected for Sweden’s Four Nations Faceoff roster by NHL.com

Best-on-best hockey is finally returning in 2025.

No, it’s not in the form of the Olympics (although that is on its way back as well), but instead, it’s returning in the form of the Four Nations Faceoff.

The tournament will be hosted in Montreal and Boston from Feb. 12-20. Four teams—representing the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Finland—will compete with rosters solely constructed of NHL players, giving hockey fans across the globe a chance to watch the first international competition with NHL players in it since the 2016 World Cup of Hockey.

Tickets for games in the two cities are going on sale, and rosters will be announced in a month. Many outlets, including NHL.com, are making predictions about what rosters could look like when the tournament rolls around.

The Calgary Flames have a representative in NHL.com’s projected roster for Team Sweden – defenceman Rasmus Andersson.

For some time, Andersson has been the backbone of the Flames’ defence and has stepped up his game since Ryan Huska took charge behind the bench. He’s averaging the most time on ice of his career — hovering around 24 minutes a game — and scored 39 points in 78 games last season, good for second among Flames defencemen behind only MacKenzie Weegar.

Since the 2024-25 season began, Andersson has arguably been the best player on the Flames roster. With 10 points through the team’s first nine games, the sample size is still small, but his contributions on the offensive side of the ice cannot be understated. He currently leads the Flames in points by a margin of three, with Connor Zary, Jonathan Huberdeau, and Andrei Kuzmenko all at the seven-point mark. Regarding his point total relative to his other defencemen, he has six more than the next-closest player.

Staff writer Tom Gulitti had this to say about their prediction for the Swedish defence core for the tournament:

We made one tweak to our defense corps from when we last did this exercise in July, adding Andersson in place of Adam Larsson of the Seattle Kraken. Andersson is a two-way defenseman who brings more of an offensive element than Larsson. Andersson is off to a strong start this season with 10 points (four goals, six assists) in eight games after he had 39 points (nine goals, 30 assists) in 78 games last season. More of a stay-at-home defenseman, Larsson had 18 points (four goals, 14 assists) in 81 games last season. Andersson and Larsson both shoot right-handed, so there remains an imbalance of five left-handed shots (Dahlin, Ekholm, Forsling, Hedman, Lindholm) and two righties (Karlsson, Andersson). One of the left-shot defensemen will have to play on the right side, but that shouldn’t be a problem with the versatility in this group.

There can never be enough offence in a tournament where the best players are playing against each other. What Andersson also brings to the table is speed and creativity, something every defence core will want to have as much of as possible. It feels as if this Swedish defence has a good balance of players who have more offensive and defensive inclinations, the former being Andersson, Rasmus Dahlin, Victor Hedman, and Erik Karlsson, with the latter being Mattias Ekholm, Hampus Lindholm, and Gustav Forsling.

Sweden could be one of the most exciting teams in the tournament. If Andersson can keep up his current pace of producing as one of the best defenders in the NHL, it should put him ahead of other potential candidates like Larsson for one of the jobs on the back-end. Time will tell, but if these predictions stand, Flames fans will have even more of a reason to watch.