On Tuesday, Jan. 2nd, the Canadians fell in the quarter-final of the 2024 World Junior Championships to Czechia off a goal in the dying seconds of the match.
“For us, that was revenge,” said Czechia captain and Buffalo Sabres prospect Jiri Kulich. Kulich was part of the Czech squad that lost to Canada in last year’s World Junior finals.
After beating the Canadians, Czechia moved on to the semi-finals where they were bounced by the Swedes, the eventual silver-medalists. Despite the loss, Czechia still had the opportunity to play in the consolation final against Finland. In a crazy turn of events, Czechia pulled four goals out of their back pocket late in the third period to claim the bronze medal by a score of 8-5.
Prior to last year, the Czechs hadn’t medalled since 2005, and medalled only four times since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, the Czechs have finished third, second and fourth in their previous three tournaments. In addition to highly-selected prospects over the past few drafts like Eduard Sale, David Jiricek and Jiri Kulich, they look like a hockey nation on the rise.
It’s not just Czechia either. The Americans have won two of the past four tournaments, including this year where the States had a dominant roster despite leaving talented prospects like James Hagens (projected No. 1 pick in 2025), Cole Eiserman (projected top-five pick this year), Hunter Brzustewicz (leads all OHL defenceman in points) and Quentin Musty (second in the OHL in points-per-game) all at home. Even the second-place Swedes, who beat the Canadians 2-0 in round-robin play and were lacking star player Leo Carlsson, had a very deep and promising team.
As the whole hockey world seems to be taking strides toward the future, the Canadians are treading water.
The Canadians are the definition of a “go big or go home” team. Since 2005, the Canadians have won an undoubtedly impressive 10 times. They’ve also placed second four times and third twice. However, they’ve also missed medalling five times, almost the same number of times they reached second or third combined. These misses have also all come in the last 10 years.
This year, Canada was surely impacted by having many of last year’s best players graduate to the NHL, including Connor Bedard, Adam Fantilli, Shane Wright, Zach Benson and Kevin Korchinski.
Similarly, the 2019 Canadians failed to medal after losing Cale Makar, Jordan Kyrou and Robert Thomas. Same deal with the 2016 team that was missing Connor McDavid, Shea Theodore, Josh Morrissey and Darnell Nurse. Canada’s 2014 team missed Nathan MacKinnon, while in 2013 MacKinnon played very poorly, only registering one point in six games.
More often than not, part of the problem seems to be what happened this year: not knowing what to do in the face of graduations.
In an exit interview with Josh Clipperton for TSN, Canada’s general manager Peter Anholt suggested that for a team built around tenacity and depth, they needed to find more ways to get pucks on net and to score.
Perhaps part of the problem was this being the focus.
On teams with star power like Bedard, Makar, McDavid or MacKinnon, it makes sense to surround them with players who check hard and fill in gaps in other areas.
However, if your major offensive catalysts graduate, perhaps you should be trying to find new ones instead of insisting on players who “play the right way”.
For example, despite initially selecting eight WHL players for their roster, none of them were Andrew Cristall, Riley Heidt or Jagger Firkus, numbers one, two and three respectively in points-per-game in the WHL. Firkus was added to the roster after an injury, but never suited up. Brayden Yager, a defensively limited scoring forward who played all five games, is 15th. These offensive players could have made a difference.
Another issue was simply deployment. Fraser Minten got a lot of powerplay minutes throughout the tournament, despite not being very effective. Minten doesn’t even play on the first powerplay on his junior team. Meanwhile, Carson Rehkopf, a goal-per-game in the OHL and one of the best powerplay merchants in the country, was often left out. Firkus, as previously mentioned, didn’t even play. Easton Cowan had a strong tournament, but was rarely used on the penalty kill where his speed and pressure could shine. Canada also only played one goalie the entire tournament, Mathis Rousseau, which is a heavy workload, especially for an undrafted goalie. Ty Nelson, who wasn’t originally selected either, stood out as one of the Canadians’ best defenceman.
The defensive personnel was one of the more glaring problems. While injuries to Tanner Molendyk and Tristan Luneau obviously hurt, none of the Canadian defencemen played particularly well outside of that. In their initial selections, the Canadians expected to rely on two d-men for offence, Molendyk, who got hurt, and Denton Mateychuk. The rest of the group looked to be “safer” defensive-minded selections, who all failed to perform. The fact that Nelson (a late addition) and Jake Furlong (expected to be the extra defenceman) were two of the Canadians’ best defencemen raises a lot of questions.
When Canada doesn’t medal at the World Juniors, it’s always treated like some sort of national emergency. While I’m not here pulling my hair out, there are certainly causes for concern.
For the juniors, our attitude has to change. We need to bring our top scorers, especially in years when our talent is thinner. It seems counterintuitive to bring more tenacious, two-way players when your top scorers leave.
Also, if you’re general manager Scott Salmond and you’re complaining about your players having to be “learning on the job,” maybe that’s indicative of roster construction. Cristall and Colby Barlow—last year’s captain—were both draft-eligible players on last year’s team that were left at home.
This year, despite a significantly weaker team on both forward and defence, we left all our draft-eligibles at home. Could Zayne Parekh or Sam Dickinson have contributed to this D-corps? Could Berkly Catton or Cayden Lindstrom have added some offensive spark from lower in the lineup? At the very least, bringing in more draft-eligible players—even if they barely play—could help bridge the gap in weaker years.
While Canada definitely suffered through some bad luck and a weaker crop of players, those are not the only issues that are responsible for Canada’s early World Juniors exit.
