Emilie Miranda | Deputy Copy Editor
Featured illustration courtesy of Christopher Lai
Take a breath, junior hockey fans: one of the most tumultuous tournaments in recent memory is complete. The 2017 World Junior Hockey Championship, hosted in Toronto and Montreal, saw the reigning Finnish champions come two losses away from being relegated to a lower division for the first time in tournament history; the Danish team double their total wins; and, not one, but two classic matchups between the United States and Canada. It was filled with unlikely penalties, low attendance, high ticket prices, weird bounces and a nail-biting finish. Ultimately, it was the United States that captured the gold medal in a 5-4 shootout win over Canada.
Team Canada struggled in last year’s tournament in Finland, finishing sixth after being plagued by penalty killing and goalkeeping problems. It was a sharp contrast to 2015, when Canada went undefeated and never fell behind on the scoreboard.
Consistent success is hard to come by in a short tournament that features teams for seven games at most. “With the short-term competition, [the challenge] is exactly that: you don’t know everybody, you’re trying to get a team to come together as fast as possible, buy into the game plan that the coaching staff will create and really have the players come together as a group and want to play, not only just for their country, but for each other,” says Lions men’s hockey head coach Chris Dennis, who was an assistant coach for Hockey Canada’s U17 program in 2016.
The 2017 tournament was the 12th time Canada has hosted the tournament, and this year’s group was able to continue the trend of medal-winning at home. But the so-called home-ice advantage is a double-edged sword: while the home team will usually have the fans behind them, there is also more pressure to win. “You’re with Hockey Canada, you always want to win the gold—but focusing on the end result can cause you to miss steps and to ultimately fall short,” says Dennis.
Head coach Dominique Ducharme put together a team of 18- and 19-year-olds who have all been drafted into the NHL, five of whom were returnees from the disastrous 2016 tournament.
During selection camp, the prospective Canadian juniors played and won two games against a U Sports team made up of the best players from Canadian universities, including York defenceman Derek Sheppard. Once the roster was finalized, Canada played three exhibition games: a pair of 5-0 shutout wins against Finland and the Czech Republic and a 4-3 overtime win against Switzerland.
The first test of the tournament itself was against Russia on Boxing Day, a game in which Canada outshot Russia 37-17 and scored three power play goals to win by a final score of 5-3. Captain and returning player Dylan Strome scored two goals while Mathew Barzal, another returnee, had a goal and two assists.
The next day, Canadian goalie Connor Ingram backstopped Canada to a 5-0 shutout against Slovakia. Canada again vastly outshot their opponents, this time by 39-6. Five different Canadians scored, with two goals coming on the power play.
Their next win came against Latvia, who had more shots than Russia and Slovakia combined, but the game ended 10-2 in favour of Canada. Forward Taylor Raddysh scored four goals, tying a team record first set by Mario Lemieux in 1983. Despite the high score, Canada came out flat-footed and allowed Latvia to pressure them on the puck. The Canadians also lacked discipline, taking 10 minor penalties during the game and allowing one shorthanded goal.
Canada’s final game of the round robin was a classic New Year’s Eve matchup against the United States to determine first place in their group going into the quarterfinals. Canada was outworked in the first period, falling prey to numerous offsides and bad passes that ultimately led to two power play goals by the United States.
Canada was unable to capitalize on several power play opportunities of their own, including a passing-the-stick interference penalty—a rare call when a player uses his own stick to pass the goalie’s stick back to him—by Charlie McAvoy and a five-minute major and game misconduct by captain Luke Kunin for a hit on Canadian Philippe Myers, ending his tournament with a concussion. Finally, emerging Canadian defenceman Thomas Chabot cut the Americans’ lead in half with a second-period power play goal on another McAvoy penalty.
The United States came back with another goal just five minutes later to kill the Canadians’ momentum. In a bizarre set of circumstances, both teams took too-many-men penalties with just over a minute left in the game and the final score remained 3-1. A malfunction during the post-game American anthem prevented the flag from rising to the rafters properly, and it had to be held at ice-level for the duration of the anthem.
In their quarterfinal game against the Czech Republic, Canada played an uninspiring first period, with only forward Julien Gauthier showing much energy. The Czechs took a 1-0 lead after the puck bounced off a defenceman’s head, off the referee and to Czech forward David Kase’s stick. Canada took control of the game in the second period with goals by Blake Speers, Stephens and Chabot, and Gauthier added two more goals in the third for a 5-3 final score.
Canada was up against undefeated tournament favourite Sweden in the semifinals. Though Canada came out with good momentum, Ingram allowed two goals on three shots in the first eight minutes. Goaltender Carter Hart, who had played against Russia and Latvia in the round robin, then came in and did not allow another goal. Canada went on to win 5-2 after another two-goal effort by Gauthier, whose “Quebec line” with Nicolas Roy and Pierre-Luc Dubois dominated the Swedes.
“The coaching staff did not put their full confidence in a goaltender like Carter Hart, who draws similarities to goalies like Martin Jones and Steve Mason,” says Brian Henriques, second-year political science student. “By putting Hart in after Ingram let in those two goals against Sweden, it saved their chances.”
In the other semifinal, the United States emerged victorious over Russia, with forward Troy Terry scoring three times in the shootout to bring the Americans to the gold medal game against Canada. Russia then defeated Sweden for the bronze medal. Though Sweden has emerged from the round robin undefeated in 10 consecutive tournaments, they have only captured two gold medals in the past 36 years.
Hart started the gold-medal game, and Canada came out skating and passing confidently. Chabot and fellow defenseman Jeremy Lauzon put Canada up by two goals in the first, Chabot having taken down fellow Senators prospect Colin White behind the Canadian net before scoring at the other end. In the second period, the United States surged back to tie the game as Canada scrambled with turnovers, bad passes and offside calls.
In the third period, the momentum shifted again after American Kieffer Bellows took a penalty for kneeing Canadian forward Mathieu Joseph. Roy scored on the power play, and Joseph returned to the game and scored to extend their lead to 4-2. Less than a minute later, Bellows scored the 4-3 goal, and then White tied the game, which headed to overtime. Twenty minutes of edge-of-your-seat, nail-biting five-on-five hockey were unable to decide the final score, even after the United States took a too-many-men penalty. With a final shot total of 50-36 for Canada, the game went to a shootout.
The first three shooters for each team couldn’t put the puck in the net, but the Americans turned to Terry, the shootout hero against Russia. He used the same move that earned him three goals in the previous game, scoring on Hart through the five-hole for what would be the 5-4 game-winner. The tournament concluded with a shootout that created bitterness and disappointment among fans and players alike. It was an emotionally and physically draining loss, but Canada received the silver medal and redemption from their sixth-place finish last year.
“Every year, the strengths on the teams change, and in recent tournaments we’ve seen [Canada] fall behind the pack,” says second-year Seneca@York student Alessia Protomanni. “Though Canada is the haven for all things hockey, other countries just keep getting stronger.”
In recent years, Canadian success at the World Juniors has become far from guaranteed. Team Canada won the gold medal for five-straight years between 2005 and 2009, but has captured it only one since. It has truly become an international tournament, with five different champions being crowned in the last seven years.
Henriques suggests success is tied to how hockey is being developed across the country. “I think hockey is falling in general in Canada, while it is growing elsewhere. The United States has passed us for the most number of children playing hockey,” he says.
Though it was not the result any Canadian wanted, this tournament was a huge improvement over last year, when Canada’s penalty kill was the worst of the 10 teams and no players were named All-Stars. This year, the penalty kill was ranked third, and Chabot—who played over 43 minutes in the gold-medal game and led Canada in scoring—was named part of the tournament All-Star Team, the Best Defenceman and was also crowned the tournament’s Most Valuable Player. Canada also scored the most goals and took the most shots in this year’s tournament, with every Canadian player registering at least one point.
“They used their forwards and defence [to the] best [of] their ability; it made up for the lack of stability when it came to goaltending. Hart came in when the team needed him most,” says Protomanni. “They worked as a team and it helped the goaltending immensely. They played defensively when they needed to.”
Next year’s tournament starts on December 26, 2017 in Buffalo, with Canada set to play the United States on December 29 in the tournament’s first outdoor game.
