WJC Final

Hockey fans love the World Junior Hockey championships. It's a positive tournament that you can't help but enjoy in a totally different way than the NHL. They're kids so you can't get too frustrated with them, it's a short sprint so each game is exciting, and Canada, at least lately, usually wins. Pretty good eh?

I like the World Juniors for all those reasons, but there's one more. Each year, you're introduced to players from small-town junior teams in Canada, some you know from the draft but many you know nothing about. You get names and credentials from their TSN profiles but really, you've never seen most of them play in person or on TV. You've also never seen them play together and never seen them against any other teams in the world, all of whom are similarily thrown together. It's a total crapshoot. There's always a few holdovers from previous tournaments that everyone knows will be good, like Alzner this year, but what makes the tournament so much fu is seeing which players come out of nowhere, surprise the analysts, and become short-lived heroes. Most of those players are, in reality, marginal NHL prospects who are projected to be, at most, 3rd or 4th line grinders. Watching them elevate their game for two weeks over the holidays, block shots, play hurt, jump the glass when they score and cry when they win or lose is to see players, most likely, at the peak of their hockey careers. It's kind of sad, to see an individual's career peak at seventeen, but we would probably all like to have such a peak. Lots of players from this tournament will go on to solid NHL careers, some will win Stanley Cups and go on to the Hall of Fame. To me though, the part of the World Juniors that resonates is those kids who make the team and become folk heroes for those few weeks, players like John Slaney, Tyler Bouck, Boyd Devereaux. Even while you're watching it, you know they just won't match that level of fame the rest of their careers.

A few quick opinions, in no particular order of importance. Get this thing in Canada every other year. There's nothing worse, as many smarter people than I have repeatedly stated, than watching packed arenas in Canada one year and empty Eurorinks the next. It demeans the tournament and the players. One thing it does is fit into the NHL's concept of sport development: Showing The Game In Places That Don't Care.

Watching TSN hockey coverage of any kind forces you to find ways to rationalize Pierre McGuire's existence. You can't avoid him, if he's not interrupting Gord he's hooting from his little rink-side Pierre Booth (proof that Gord still has more pull at TSN), using superlatives like he's auditioning for trailer voiceovers at the Disney Sports Movie department, or screaming for penalties against Not Canada. I don't really have a good reason to like Pierre yet, he's SO LOUD, he lavishes praise and doles out criticism with exaggerations not heard outside of 300, and in the World Juniors he's such an awful homer. I don't want him to be harder on Canada, that's not what this tournament is about, just pay attention to who they're playing. Show a little love when Sweden blocks a shot or the U.S. shakes Canada's hand after the semi-finals rather than trashing their hotel room.

2-0 going into the third, go Canada!