Streaming of women's international tournaments that aren't the Olympics has long been a sore spot for fans, especially in the United States. TSN/RDS has traditionally been pretty good about bringing Canadian fans their women's national team hockey games (such as at the Women's Worlds and Four Nations Cup) -- which works out well for USA fans sometimes, too, since the gold medal games are frequently between the USA and Canada.
However, catching every USA women's game isn't always possible. This year, folks might be in luck with Hockey Sweden broadcasting games at LiveArena.com. (This year's tournament will be held in the cities of Sundsvall and Kovland, Sweden.) At some point in the last couple days, "Watch Live" links went up on USA Women's Hockey in their Four Nations Cup section.
The links take you to LiveArena.com, where you can click through to purchase a subscription on a page like this.
Here's what you need to know:
- Subscriptions are 79 Swedish krona, which is currently equivalent to $9.29 USD or $12.23 Canadian. ETA: This price includes 15.80 VAT. Your Swedish tax dollars at work! You may also incur a bank fee for an international transaction, so keep that in mind, too.
- The subscription is recurring, so you'll have to remember to cancel it -- unless you want to keep your Hockey Sweden access.
- The subscription gives you access to replays as well, so if you miss the game you want to watch, you can watch it later instead.
- As far as we can tell, this seems to be good for all games of the tournament -- though you might have to click around the LiveArena site to find the right link.
But to make it easy for you, here are all the links:
- Canada vs Finland - Wednesday, November 4 @ 10 AM EST
- Sweden vs United States - Wednesday, November 4 @ 1:30 PM EST
- United States vs Canada - Thursday, November 5 @ 1 PM EST
- Sweden vs Finland - Thursday, November 5 @ 1 PM EST
- Sweden vs Canada - Saturday, November 7 @ 7 AM EST
- Finland vs United States - Saturday, November 7 @ 10:30 AM EST
- Bronze medal game - Sunday, November 8 @ 5 AM EST
- Gold medal game - Sunday, November 8 @ 8:30 AM EST
We don't have any information yet about a potential Canadian/English language broadcast of the events, and I figure that commentary on these streams (if any) will be in Swedish, but it's better than not being able to watch at all.
If there is a Four Nations stream in English broadcast in Canada, there may be an (illegal) way to stream it online, but we won't share that information here. However, suffice it to say that those in the community should be able to point you in the right direction, should such a stream pop up.
For under $10, buying a Hockey Sweden month pass sounds like a good option to follow every game of the Four Nations Cup.
If we get any more information, we'll update this post.
