We're one day away from the biggest international showdown in 15 years, with Team USA hosting Team Canada in a 4 Nations Face-Off grudge match that will feature all sorts of bad blood both on and off the ice.

And I'm going to be honest: My tummy hurts.

I know you're probably here looking for some sort of preview, or maybe historical context. I can't do it. Not today. Right now, I could use a distraction.

So instead, we're going to get dumb today. Call it a palate cleanser. This is an idea I've had on my "too dumb to actually do" list -- yes, of course that list exists, don't act like you're remotely surprised -- for a while now, but it popped into my head again this week while watching Team USA.

That team has a pair of Connors ... sort of. They've got Kyle Connor on the first line, and Connor Hellebuyck in goal. That had me wondering if Kyle Connor Hellebuyck would be the best combined name in international hockey history. And if we reach over to Team Canada, would Kyle Connor McDavid be the best offensive combo?

I have no idea, so I'm going to waste some of your valuable time figuring it out.

But first, a few ground rules™: We're looking for combos where one player's first name matches the other's last name, and where the first name is whatever the player was known by during their career. That means that while Rick Nash's birth certificate might say "Richard," he can't pair up with The Rocket. (When in doubt, the Hockey-Reference player page will settle any disputes.) That's going to make things tougher for us, so we'll balance the difficulty by going easy on accents and pronunciation. I'm also going to put a 200-game minimum on any players we use, just to avoid filling the list with combos like Kevan Guy Lafleur, Luke Adam Oates or Gordon Mark Messier, where you haven't heard of one of them.

Is this a worthy use of anyone's time? Of course not. But I'm looking for anything that gets me away from figuring out which Team Canada star will end up paired off with a Tkachuk, so let's do this.

Let's start with our 4 Nations inspiration.

Not bad -- 1,607 points is nothing to sneeze at. But it's also pretty clear these two won't be the top combo we can find, given they're both still in their prime and haven't even hit a combined 1,300 games.

For example, we can beat that point total, if only barely, using another name from 4 Nations.

That's a solid four-point lead, which should get us through McDavid's first game back this weekend. But we can clearly do better than that. For example ...

Not bad for a forward/defenseman combo. Let's try one pair that fits that pattern, albeit one where one member of the group project is doing a bit more work than the other.

That's our clubhouse leader for total points, but it's also a blueprint. Take one high-powered forward who plays for a couple of decades, then add in a solid defenseman. If we can find a blueliner with a bit more offense, we'll be all set. And we have:

That's the highest point total I've found so far, although this is the part where I should probably mention I'm pretty sure there are good combos I've whiffed on. Feel free to point those out in the comments; normally that sort of stuff really bothers me, but I'll be incapable of human emotion until late Thursday night at the earliest so it's fine.

OK, so we've found our points leader. But James Patrick Kane falls just short of the goal-scoring title, trailing Patrik Elias Lindholm. Surely we can find an option that lit the lamp more than 636 times, right?

Of course we can ...

First things first: We could turn our new friend James Patrik Kane into James Patrick Marleau, which would cost us points but bump up our goal total to 715. That's impressive, but we can still beat it. For example:

That's 775 goals, which ups the ante significantly. But we can top it by drawing on two wingers who weren't ever on the Hall of Fame radar but did consistently put up solid numbers over long careers.

Getting a same-name combo to almost 800 goals in a league where just over 100 guys have ever hit 400 feels like it might be about the best we can do. And for a while, on my list, it was. Then I realized I'd missed a couple of Hall of Famers whose names you may have been yelling at me this whole time.

There's your new leader for both goals and points, and I don't see anyone topping that. Let's switch gears and try our luck in net.

I'll be honest, I'm having trouble filling out the goaltending spots. I'll pause here so everyone can make Team Canada jokes.

Got them all in? Good. Here's the issue for today's assignment: I can find plenty of combos that involve one goaltender, like Patrick Roy Conacher, Troy Terry Sawchuk, Marc Denis Savard and even Mike Vernon Fiddler. It's possible that Rocket Richard Brodeur would be the best of all of them.

But two goalies at once? That gets tricky. Maybe that's to be expected, given that we're dealing with one-fifth as many options as the skaters have. But if we want to do the whole "combine the stats" thing, we're going to be limited.

In the end, I think we'll have to lower our 200-game rule for the goalies. I won't go so far that we end up using combos like Curtis Joseph Woll or Benny Grant Fuhr. But if we nudge it down just a bit, we can wind up with a pairing where both guys have a Vezina, which is the best I can do for our goaltenders.

Not bad. We'll take it. (And yes, the spelling works, it is indeed Jim Carey with one "r." Jim Carrey is the slightly more famous actor.)

And with that, we're done ... or we would be if something wasn't bugging me. Those skater combos featured some great pairs, but it feels like we're missing something. And that's when it hit me -- that last column that we haven't paid much attention to. Who's up for some old-school hockey?

Based on what we've seen so far, our leader in terms of penalty minutes is Rob Blake Wheeler at 2,443. Can we top that if you focus on the physical guys? You know we can.

Let's start with a combo that you knew I couldn't resist.

I feel like that duo would feud with Bobby Clarke MacArthur. But in terms of total PIM, they can't match our next duo, which features a couple of All-Stars ...

Not bad, but we can raise the bar ever so slightly with this combo:

In case you're wondering, that's Bob "The Hound" Kelly from the Broad Street Bully-era Flyers, not fellow 1970s bruiser Battleship Bob Kelly (who finished well behind in PIM despite the superior nickname). But either way, they're going to get left behind by this next combo.

I'm pretty sure those are your tag-team champs. And yeah, I'm as surprised as you are that Ray Ferraro shows up here. I thought Ray Bourque would get the nod, given how long he played for, but he finished about 140 PIM behind TV Ray. Those WHL guys, am I right?

This was fun, and it really lowered my stress level. Let's take it home ...

I'm pretty sure we've found the leaders in most individual categories, but what about a duo that can do it all? If we set some arbitrary thresholds -- let's say 600 goals, 1,700 points and 2,500 PIM -- are there any combos left out there that can hit all three?

I tried some of the combos you might be thinking of, like Bobby Ryan Getzlaf or Corey Perry Turnbull. I even tried Jeff Carter Verhaeghe. No combo comes close.

Except for one...

Sigh. And after all of that, we end up with a Team Canada star paired off with a Tkachuk.

Yep, my tummy hurts again. Let's burn off some nervous energy with your combos in the comment section.