For the first time in the history of the IIHF World Juniors, Canada has failed to advance past the quarter-final round in back to back years.
Canadian fans can be excused for having a case of deja vu as Czechia once again sent the host nation home earlier than anticipated via a 4-3 victory in the dying seconds of the game. The Czech side saw goals from Petr Sikora, Jakub Stancl, Eduard Sale, and Adam Jecho as they’ll now face the Americans in a semi-final showdown on Saturday.
However, Canadian hockey fans have plenty to gripe about regarding their team’s performance on home soil that have little to do with the effort from the players themselves.
Several things can be true at once. Yes, there were several questionable calls which went against Canada throughout the game including a major penalty (which may not have been a penalty at all) which resulted in an ejection early on, and another late call which led directly to the game winning goal. Few will argue that referees Sean Macfarlane and Riku Brander will be receiving many compliments on their performance in the post game analysis.
It’s also true that the Canadian side by and large played remarkably stout defence in 5v5 situations having not surrendered an even strength goal prior to the loss to the Czechs throughout the tournament.
But at the end of the day, this was a flawed roster from the start which didn’t require a PhD in coaching for the average fan to notice. That issue was then compounded by an almost alarming sense of cocksureness from head coach Dave Cameron & Co. who seemed unwilling to adjust their strategy despite both the eyeball test and statistics hitting them over the head with the fact that whatever they were preaching, wasn’t translating into on ice success.
While one can pick apart individual player performances, and single out moments which may or may not have affected the final scores of games, no one needs to wear the poor performance more than the coaching staff and Hockey Canada itself.
Keep in mind, if not for TSN’s phenomenal marketing of the World Juniors, this would be just another youth hockey tournament. These are after all kids playing out there, most of which would still need to travel to the Gatineau side of the river to even consume a beer legally.
So if anyone is to blame for the lacklustre results, it needs to start with the adults in the room.
A coach can’t lace them up and score a goal or block a shot on their own. But they can certainly take advantage of talent made available to them, install systems that result in better on ice production, and make tangible off-ice changes to reset the temperature in the locker room. Which, as far as most Canadian hockey fans who watched the tournament could tell, was in desperately short supply this holiday season.
Of the 32 first rounders selected in the 2024 NHL Entry Draft 19 of them were Canadian born. In 2023 13 of the first round picks were Canadians, meaning that over the last 2 years, 50% of ALL first round picks have been Canadian. Yet Team Canada has registered back to back 5th place finishes, both of which have come via losses to a country with a quarter of our population, and only 6% as many youth who are registered to play hockey per the most recent data (23,000 for Czechia, and 340,365 for Canada).
To be fair, every year there are notable cuts from the final Team Canada World Junior roster, many of which go on to have wildly successful professional careers. Simply put, when you have as much top end talent as Canada does in hockey, you can’t roster them all. You also need players who will play a variety of roles from penalty kill, to power play, stay at home defencemen and more.
But when one makes as many eyebrow raising cuts as Dave Cameron and Hockey Canada did with regard to the roster, that’s a hill you better be prepared to die on. Because if it backfires, everyone and their grandmother knows who made the final call.
Some of the many notable “snubs” this year include 4 top 10 draft picks from the 2024 NHL Entry Draft in Beckett Sennecke, Tij Iginla, Carter Yakemchuk and Zayne Parekh. Then there’s also OHL points leader Michael Misa who was left off the roster who is currently averaging 0.938 goals per game with 30 tallies across 32 games played. Forward Andrew Cristall (24G, 33A in 26 GP) who was one of the last cuts from the Washington Capitals training camp was also left off the roster.
Any of the above are perfectly justifiable cuts if your team goes out and performs like you expect it to. But when you leave that much offensive firepower on the sidelines, and only manage a 10 GF to 7 GA preliminary round and a quarter final exit, then fans have every right to second guess your decisions.
If any member of the Canadian coaching staff can look you in the eye and tell you that their team couldn’t have used a Beckett Sennecke on the roster this year to help generate some offence, then they’re going through a masterclass of revisionist history.
The 3rd overall pick from last year’s draft was as hot as any player across the CHL in the lead up to the tournament, registering 18 points (8G, 10A) across 6 games in the month of December alone. Meanwhile Senators fans would have been overjoyed to watch their star draft pick play on home ice had Yakemchuk and his booming slapshot and NHL ready frame been tearing up and down the ice.
One got the sense that fans were looking for something, or someone, to get behind as the tournament wore on. Yet at every turn, it was more self inflicted wounds, and mostly ugly hockey that they had to settle for.
Winning ugly can be a recipe for success when you’ve got an overmatched team on paper. But when you’ve got a fleet of Ferraris in the garage, you don’t pull up on race day in a Honda Civic because you think it can get the job done.
Buzz words like “role players” and “team chemistry” have been buoyed about by the coaching staff and Hockey Canada management in the lead up to the tournament, which in a bubble are fine and dandy. But one has to remember that the 1992 USA Dream Team wasn’t iconic because it was Michael Jordan and “the role players”. They’ve become the stuff of legend because they amassed the most highly skilled roster of players perhaps ever assembled on one team across any sport (minus Isiah Thomas who was cut at Jordan’s behest, but that’s a story for another day).
In an interview with TSN 1200 in the lead up to the annual holiday event, Cameron told reporters “This is a tough tournament. Finishing fifth isn’t a reflection on anyone other than the fact that it’s a tough tournament. There are no easy games. There are four or five teams that can win it. The game evolves. Players evolve. Countries evolve. There are no easy games, and you need a little bit of luck. There are no guarantees. You have to put the work in every day.”
And the mantra of “no easy games” held true with a shocking 3-2 loss to Latvia, a team whom the Canadians had beaten by a combined score of 41-4 over their last 4 meetings, an ugly 3-0 win over Germany and a one sided 4-1 loss to the US.
If one’s loading up on role players, those players need to ultimately live up to their roles, something that the Canadian roster struggled to do across virtually every category. The team finished 6th on the penalty kill (74%), 6th on the power play (21%), and dead last in scoring efficiency (6.34 SG%). Which in a 10 team condensed tournament format just doesn’t cut it no matter how you analyze it.
For a team built on chemistry, that seemed to come in only short spurts based on what fans and scouts alike were watching. According to Steven Ellis of Daily Face Off, one NHL scout quipped that Canada was the most skilled team in the tournament but “they’re skating like they are chickens with their heads chopped off. They’re so disjointed and all over the place trying to be the hero.”
Fans at the CTC bore witness to continuous miscues Thursday night, from sloppy passes, to uncoordinated zone entries, undisciplined play and more. Toronto Maple Leafs top prospect Easton Cowan has shouldered his fair share of criticism from fans and analysts alike throughout the tournament. But a player of his ilk, riding a 56 game point streak, doesn’t just forget how to shoot the puck.
1 goal, and 2 assists for the tournament isn’t anything that can have the Maple Leafs brass thrilled about when they’re reviewing game film of their former first rounder. But he, along with many others such as blue liners Sam Dickinson and Oliver Bonk seemed to be miscast in the roles that the coaching staff wanted them to play.
Far too often simple things that players are taught in Peewee or younger weren’t being done. There was virtually no traffic in front of the net at any point vs. Czechia (or other preliminary round games for that matter). The shot selection was hard to watch with most of the team’s chances coming from low risk angles. And more oft than not, skaters would try to play hero-hockey and take the puck into the zone 1 on 3, not be able to find space, and peel off into the corner harmlessly.
Save for a flurry of rushes in the dying minutes of the 2nd period and first half of the 3rd, Czechia kept things relatively easy for their net minder Thursday.
One could chalk things up to teenagers needing reps in order to settle into the coaching staff’s vision. Unfortunately the coaching staff seemed hell bent on preventing those reps from taking place regardless of what happened the game prior.
Per hockey insider Cam Robinson, the Canadian squad cancelled their practice after the loss to Latvia, cancelled their practice after the loss to the Americans, and then cancelled their morning skate ahead of their QF showdown with Czechia. “Not sure how this Canadian team can justify this,” Robinson wrote on social media.
Moreover, Cameron and the coaching staff seemed to take a “what do you want me to do?” approach when questioned about the parade to the penalty box act the team was putting on. A response which didn’t do him many favours in the mind of many a Canadian hockey fan.
When asked what he would do as a coach to address the undisciplined play, he curiously responded “Can’t, in terms I can’t address it. They know it. They know that penalties are penalties. You know you can talk all you want. Its a short tournament. They have to decide. Simple as that.”
That type of approach might fly at the professional level, when you’re dealing with adults, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone making the case that teenagers can’t use more guidance than a 35 year old NHL veteran. It’s all the more damning when opportunities to correct the issues, say via a practice, aren’t taken advantage of.
All in all it was a frustrating tournament for hockey fans north of the border. It’s foolish to think that Canada needs to win gold every year they compete. In a single elimination tournament anything can happen (just ask Purdue and Gonzaga every March). But the 2025 tournament will be remembered more for what could have been, and the curious coaching and roster decisions made, than anything the kids actually did on the ice.
While there’s always next year, one hopes that the old boys club at Hockey Canada is taking notes on their recent run of mediocrity.
-Kyle Skinner
Twitter: @JKyleSkinner