Canada, U.S. In Top Spots Ahead Of Wednesday’s 2022 World Juniors Quarterfinals

This month’s IIHF World Junior Championship re-run is short on fans, sponsors and missing a perennial contender.

But while the first crack at the 2022 tournament that ran last winter was scrubbed after four days as a result of game cancellations and other issues surrounding COVID-19, it looks like a winner will be named this time around.

Preliminary-round games wrapped up Monday, and seeding is now set for Wednesday’s quarterfinal knockouts.

Here’s a look at the biggest storylines to date.

North America Stays Strong

When the last full World Juniors wrapped up in a fan-free bubble in Edmonton in January of 2021, the United States edged Canada 2-0 in the gold-medal game. Spencer Knight, now of the Florida Panthers, earned the shutout in net. Trevor Zegras of the Anaheim Ducks was the tournament’s leading scorer, with 18 points in seven games.

This year, those same two teams came out on top in the round robin — without breaking much of a sweat.

Canada won each of its four games by at least three goals, and scored a tournament-leading 27 times — an average of 6.25 goals per game. Captain and first-line center Mason McTavish leads the way with seven goals and 13 points.

Team USA also ran the table with a perfect 4-0 record, with just one close call. After the Americans built a 3-0 lead against Sweden last Sunday, the opposition scored twice in the third period, but couldn’t find an equalizer.

The U.S. team has given up just four goals in its first four games, the fewest in the tournament to date. And unlike 2021, when Spencer Knight came in as the definitive No. 1, it wasn’t clear who’d be the primary netminder this time around.

Kaidan Mbereko, an undrafted 19-year-old out of Colorado College, has seized the moment. He has allowed just four goals in his three starts, for a 1.33 goals-against average and .939 save percentage. That’s tops in the tournament for goalies with three or more games played.

Up front, the Americans have been relying on a balanced attack. Only one skater, draft-eligible 17-year-old Charlie Stramel, has averaged less than 10 minutes a game of ice time. And eight of the 22 skaters on the roster are averaging at least a point a game. Thomas Bordeleau, a San Jose Sharks prospect, leads his team with seven points, and Calgary Flames prospect Matt Coronato, currently at Harvard, has four goals.

Michigan Makes Michigan

Scoring lacrosse-style goals is getting to be old hat for Kent Johnson, the former University of Michigan forward who will suit up for the Columbus Blue Jackets this fall.

This tally against Czechia is the fourth ‘Michigan’ goal of the 19-year-old’s career.

Johnson has quickly established himself as a go-to player for Team Canada at all levels. He also suited up at the cancelled World Juniors tournament in December, at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in February and at the men’s World Championship in Finland in May, and scored at least once at all four events.

That’s a sharp contrast to a number of NHL-bound players who dressed for the December world junior tournament. Johnson’s Michigan teammates Owen Power and Matty Beniers are just two impending NHL rookies who elected to skip this summer’s event, looking to avoid potential on-ice injury while focusing more fully on their seasons ahead.

Whoa, Slovakia

After a historic bronze-medal win at the Olympics and placing an unprecedented three players in the first round of the 2022 NHL Draft, Slovakia’s hockey program was dealt a blow when it finished last in Group B and failed to advance to the quarterfinal.

All three of those first-round picks — Juraj Slafkovsky (Montreal), Simon Nemec (New Jersey) and Filip Mesar (Montreal) — were on Slovakia’s roster for the December tournament, but elected to skip this summer’s edition. That left the Slovaks short on top-end talent, and after Latvia surprised Czechia with a 5-2 win on Sunday — the tiny nation’s first-ever win in a top-level world juniors competition — Slovakia was bumped down to last place in Group A.

If there’s any silver lining, it’s that no teams will be relegated this time around. So the Slovaks will live to fight another day at the 2023 edition of the tournament, scheduled for Halifax, Nova Scotia and Moncton, New Brunswick this winter.

On Wednesday, the Latvians will appear in the knockout round for the first time in history — in a year where they didn’t even participate in the December tournament. They earned a spot in the summer event after the International Ice Hockey Federation suspended Russia and Belarus from international competition in February, due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia had participated in December but once the sanctions were imposed, Latvia was the top team eligible for promotion into their now-vacant tournament slot. The Latvians had finished second, behind Belarus, in the IIHF’s Division 1 Group A tournament last December.

Short On Support

Normally, the World Junior Championship is a popular coast-to-coast holiday-season tradition in Canada — especially when it is held on home soil. Historically, Canada leads all nations in total world junior medals (33) and gold medals (18), and the event usually draws big crowds. That’s not necessarily the case in most other nations, which is why the IIHF typically holds the tournament in Canada every second year. Also, the North American time zones help draw big TV audiences, and sponsorship support generates significant revenue.

After a fan-free bubble in Edmonton in 2021 and the abbreviated tournament in Edmonton and Red Deer last December, re-mounting a summer event was intended to give organizers an opportunity to recoup some of the revenues that had been lost.

But even in Canada, hockey in August is a tough sell — especially in a northern city like Edmonton, where residents try to make the most of their blink-and-you-miss-it summer.

In addition to that natural seasonal apathy, the tournament’s image has also taken a major kick to the teeth in recent months.

Since May, Hockey Canada has been the subject of intense criticism after it became public knowledge that the organization had issued a cash settlement to a women who claimed that she had been sexually assaulted by some members of Canada’s 2018 World Junior team following a Hockey Canada event in London, Ontario in June of 2018. The organization’s funding from the federal government has since been frozen, and a parliamentary inquiry has led to revelations of other alleged incidents and other payouts, all handled far away from the glare of the spotlight.

The news has badly stained Hockey Canada’s reputation, turning fans and businesses sour. In the wake of the news, major sponsors including Scotiabank, Telus, Canadian Tire, Imperial Oil and Tim Hortons all quickly withdrew their support World Juniors — leaving the ice sheet and the rink boards at Rogers Place uniquely uncluttered when games got underway.

Typically, corporate sponsorship packages include blocks of game tickets which can be used by executives and employees or passed along to valued clients and suppliers. Not having those tickets in circulation creates even more empty seats at an event that was destined to be a tough sell even before the scandal came to light.

Normally, tickets for World Juniors in Canada are sold to the public in full-tournament packages, with the goal of maximizing total ticket sales and getting a decent number of spectators into arenas for all games, even when the host team isn’t playing. This time around, even Canada’s games are being played in front of crowds that are far below capacity. Monday’s round-robin finale between Canada and Finland was the best-attended game of the preliminary round, but saw just 5,204 spectators in 18,000 seat Rogers Place. Monday’s opening game between Switzerland and Austria drew a tournament-low 356 fans.

On July 25, Hockey Canada issued an action plan “to address systemic issues in hockey and ensure greater safety and inclusiveness in and around Canada’s game.” On August 6, Michael Brind’Amour, the chair of Hockey Canada’s board of governors, also stepped down, with Andrea Skinner now serving as interim chairperson. More steps will be needed. At this point, it appears that the organization has a long road ahead to rebuilding the trust that it had previously enjoyed from fans, sponsors and parents at the grassroots level.

Meanwhile, the games go on. After finishing first in Group A, Canada will cross over to play Group B’s fourth-place team, Switzerland, on Wednesday at 7 p.m. ET. The United States, first in Group B, will play Group A’s fourth-place team, Czechia, in the late game at 10:30 p.m. ET.

The other two quarterfinal games will see Sweden take on Latvia, while Finland faces Germany.

Semifinal games will be played on Friday, with the gold and bronze-medal games to follow on Saturday.