Canada’s Brandon Hagel on fight with USA’s Matthew Tkachuk: ‘I did it for the flag, not the cameras’

Hagel also said that Canada has no group chats or anything to plan what they’re going to do when facing the Americans. The Tampa Bay Lightning winger added that he’s playing for the Canadian flag and not to make good television.

“I think we’re out there playing for the flag, not the cameras,” Hagel said. “We don’t need to initiate anything. We don’t have any group chats going on. We’re going out there playing our game and then giving it everything and doing it for our country. We don’t need to initiate everything. We’re just going to play as hard as we can and do it for the flag on the chest.”

Seeing three scraps in an international game is unusual because IIHF rules are strict against players dropping the gloves. But since the 4 Nations Face-Off is an NHL event, the same rules don’t apply as they would for tournaments like the Olympics or World Juniors.

This has resulted in a very interesting tournament, with head-to-heads that have much more energy than the usual pond hockey played at the annual All-Star Game. Hagel noted that he came into the 4 Nations Face-Off with the mindset that this was going to be anything but another shinny game.

“I was thinking to myself laying in bed the night before the (first) game, ‘If this is going to be like an All-Star type of thing then I’m going to be so out of place because I’m putting my head through a wall tomorrow.’ That was my mentality.”

The United States could be without two key forwards on Thursday. Matthew Tkachuk didn’t play in the team’s loss to Sweden on Monday, and Brady Tkachuk left the game in the first period after slamming into the opposing net. Captain Auston Matthews also didn’t play on Monday, but it’s expected he’ll be available on Thursday.