Germany and Switzerland don't have enough NHL players to field a team and this being an all NHL tournament is why they don't have teams. The Czechs are the only other country that could put together an all NHL team that would be allowed to play(Russia could as well but that's not gonna happen)
This is not a hard tournament to understand!
Russia is out because they're an international pariah.
NHL doesn't want to share revenues with the IIHF, so therefore only NHL players can play.
Czechia is the only other country that might be able to put together a full roster - but even Finland has some issues.
Watching Germany, Switzerland, Latvia, Denmark play would be amusing - but they can't make a roster out of NHL players, and they'd almost certainly lose badly in any event.
"Team Europe" and "Team North America" were interesting but when 2016 final was Canada versus "Team Europe" it just didn't have the same jam as nation vs nation.
I could wish for any one of the above factors to not be true (#1 on my wish list - for Russia to not be invading Ukraine), but it's not the world we live in.
So we take what we can get. And I'd much rather watch the 4 Nations than another All-Star game.
Canada vs Sweden is tomorrow...