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Imagine two boys crazy about hockey.

They meet when they are six years old and for the next eight or so years, they forge a bond through the game that will blossom and evolve from childhood joy to professional careers in the best hockey league in the world.

Imagine these two pals on long car rides from arena to arena, or at sleepovers, wondering quietly about not just playing in the National Hockey League, but maybe, someday, playing against the best in the world. Together of course.

“I think I’d say we dreamed of doing stuff like this, but it almost seems like it would have been a little far-fetched that it would even be reality,” said New York Rangers defenceman Adam Fox about his friendship with Boston Bruins blueliner, Charlie McAvoy.

Funny thing about dreams, no?

Fox has since won a Norris Trophy, awarded to the best defenceman in the NHL.

McAvoy has become a cornerstone defender with the Boston Bruins.

Both have seen their shared dreams realized in full.

“I have so many memories of just sleepovers at their house, tournaments, drives, long car rides,” McAvoy said. “All the kind of things we went through, the youth hockey circuit, and they [the Fox family] are just great people and it’s definitely a pinch yourself sort of feeling. Who would have thought that the two of us would make it this far?”

The two are set to don the same jersey once more – just like they did long ago when the pair played for the Long Island Gulls. Only this time they will be wearing a Team USA jersey as NHL players.

The two lifelong friends will join the top American players in the NHL representing the United States in February at the 4 Nations Face-Off. Set for Feb. 12-20, the one-time tournament will feature the best NHL players from the U.S., Canada, Finland and Sweden, with games being played in Montreal and Boston.

The four teams will each play three games in a round-robin format with the top two teams competing in a championship final at TD Garden in Boston.

It will mark the first true best-on-best event featuring NHL players representing their home countries since the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games.

The 4 Nations Face-Off will be a precursor to the Milano Cortina 2026, where the top 12 hockey nations will vie for gold as the NHL returns to the Olympic stage for the first time since 2014.

Earlier this summer, the four participating countries in the 4 Nations Face-Off announced their first six roster members. McAvoy and Fox were among the six Americans named. The other four include recent Stanley Cup champion Matthew Tkachuk; Vancouver Canucks captain, Quinn Hughes; newly named Toronto Maple Leafs captain, Auston Matthews; and Vegas Golden Knights forward and 2023 Stanley Cup Champion, Jack Eichel.

McAvoy was sitting on his couch – one of the rare summer Saturdays that he and his wife, Kiley, were not attending a wedding – when Team USA General Manager, Bill Guerin, called to tell him the news.

“That was an incredible moment. I definitely had some chills and the butterflies getting that call,” McAvoy said.

The Bruins defenceman immediately called his family, who have been in attendance for virtually all of McAvoy’s many international events on behalf of USA Hockey. Not surprisingly, the topic of the 4 Nations Face-Off was a popular one later in the summer when McAvoy and his wife attended Fox’s wedding, which also provided McAvoy with a chance to reconnect with Fox’s parents, Bruce and Tammy, and brother, Andrew.

Now, Guerin did not pick Fox and McAvoy to be part of the initial roster of Team USA because it is a cute story about youth hockey pals reuniting on a grand international stage.

(Although we can’t complain about the compelling narrative ourselves.)

Their close and ongoing relationship speaks to one of the cornerstones of building a winning team at international events – finding common ground, building chemistry and defining team identity, all within a matter of days.

“It’s all fast,” Guerin said of the turnaround to prepare for both the 4 Nations Face-Off and 12 months later for the 2026 Olympics – which he will also preside over on behalf of USA Hockey.

“For me anyways, chemistry’s very important,” said Guerin, who won two Stanley Cups as a player and two more as an executive with the Pittsburgh Penguins. “Sure, skill, speed, physicality are all important ingredients. But those are a given at this level.

“I think how quickly we can come together is extremely important and the ability to buy into roles,” continued Guerin, who is also the current GM of the Minnesota Wild.

“And the better guys get along the more they’re going to be willing to do for the team. You have to put your ego aside. I think that’s the biggest thing is parking your ego, and you know it’s not about individuals it’s about your country and it’s about the win that’s it.”

The way McAvoy and Fox are quick to praise each other, not just as players but as human beings and friends, certainly speaks to the kind of selflessness that all teams taking part in this event strive to find.

“Having that relationship, that closeness with guys, and being able to come together pretty quickly is probably real important, so for us to have that relationship already and try to accomplish this goal, playing from six years old to 14 years old with a guy, and then being able to try and win 4 Nations and a gold medal and whatever the future of that may hold, it’s exciting for sure,” Fox said.

Those intricate relationships are like a spider web connecting players and coaches in many ways for all four participating nations, but especially Team USA.

The top six Americans all have experience playing for USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program and five – Eichel, Matthews, Fox, McAvoy and Tkachuk – intersected at various times.

“Definitely a lot of familiar faces that’ll help in easing that process of coming together quick,” Fox said.

Those critical bonds that have been forged over several years extend to Team USA’s coaching staff.

David Quinn was recently named an assistant coach on the Team USA coaching staff. He coached Fox in New York with the Rangers early in Fox’s NHL career and also coached McAvoy at Boston University.

“He really helped me on and off the ice to get to where I am today and I’m always going to be grateful for that,” McAvoy said.

And then there is Team USA head coach, Mike Sullivan.

McAvoy is married to Sullivan’s daughter, Kiley. The two met as freshmen at BU.

At the time, Sullivan was coaching Pittsburgh’s American Hockey League affiliate in Wilkes-Barre. Soon after, Sullivan would be promoted to the big club and guide the Penguins to back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2016 and 2017.

“It’s just been awesome getting to know him and getting to cheer for him like I know he does for me,” McAvoy said of Sullivan.

“At the end of the day, you take hockey out of the equation, which is just about every single time that we’re interacting and spending time in the summer and doing all sorts of things, and they’re just great people. She [Kiley] comes from an amazing family, just great human beings. It’s been unique to build this relationship and I’m super grateful to have her in my life,” McAvoy added.

Relationships are at the heart of all these kinds of events and there are myriad levels on which relationships will develop and be tested.

For instance, the American players have a solid knowledge of each other and even solid relationships through past experiences. They have also gone toe-to-toe in the heat of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Tkachuk was an instrumental part of the Florida Panthers’ first-ever Stanley Cup this past June. Along the way, Tkachuk, one of the more abrasive players in the league, helped eliminate both McAvoy with the Bruins and Fox with the Rangers.

The year before, Tkachuk and the Panthers upset the top-seeded Bruins in the First Round.

The 2024 playoffs also saw McAvoy’s Bruins knock off the Maple Leafs and Matthews in an emotional seven-game set.

“Guys play a certain way, and guys are good at getting under people’s skin and playing that way, and that’s a huge asset to have when a guy like that’s on your team,” Fox said. “So, I think it’s easy to put those differences aside.”

He pointed out how little he liked playing against Vincent Trocheck, who will also be vying for a spot on Team USA, when Trocheck was playing in Carolina. Now a member of the Rangers, Trocheck and Fox have become close friends.

Then there is the dynamic of pulling on the same NHL jersey night after night and then, suddenly, squaring off against some of those teammates at the 4 Nations Face-off and down the road at the Olympics.

McAvoy will be faced with that situation, as Bruins captain, Brad Marchand, was one of the first six players named to Canada’s 4 Nations roster.

“I think it’ll be kind of funny to go against Marchy. I’ve never played against him, only in practice,” McAvoy said. “It’ll definitely be fun. But it’s the same sentiment, you put the friendships aside and go out on the ice and settle it there and then when you get back you give everybody a big hug and get to chasing the second goals together.”

Perhaps what makes all this more rewarding for McAvoy and Fox, who last played together when they were winning a gold medal at the 2017 IIHF World Junior Championship, is that for a long time, circumstances have denied an entire generation of top young NHL players of competing against each other on the world stage.

McAvoy was expected to be part of Team USA at the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing. However, the continued fallout from the COVID-19 epidemic forced the NHL and NHLPA to withdraw from the tournament.

“For sure that was pretty disheartening,” McAvoy recalled. “That made me think that maybe, even though it was there, and it was spoken about, that maybe we’d never be able to see it through.”

That doubt has now been erased with the announcement of the 4 Nations Face-Off and the Olympics a year later, with NHL participation expected to continue at the Olympic level moving forward.

So, the 4 Nations Face-Off stands as a critical building block to the return of a robust international calendar for the NHL and its players – and of course the fans who are, like the players, itching to see the best in the world in high-level competition.

“I think whenever you have eyeballs on the best players it’s always going to help,” Fox said.

“You look at any sport, if you get high-end skill and high-end talent on TVs and people are watching it’s going to draw more into it. We talk about Olympics but even that World Cup of Hockey, that got a lot of talk that year when it was team North America and you have MacKinnon and McDavid playing with Matthews, just elite talent coming on the ice together it’s going to attract people to want to watch for sure.”