So how many of you, like myself, devoted part of your Boxing Day to watching Canada play its opening game of the 2018 IIHF World Junior Championship?
For many of us it has become a tradition of late to tune into the game Boxing Day, much as the Rose Bowl is for fans of American college football. I use the comparison for a specific reason, that being that when I was a teenager I don’t recall the World Junior Championship even being something I was aware happened.
Yes I recognize the current championship only formalized in 1977, but that would have been my Grade 11 year, a time when I followed sports as keenly as at any time in my life. It was something guys talked about, along with cars and girls during lunch hours and spares and simply walking from your locker to class.
Time has faded any recollection of when the junior championship began to draw my attention, although it might have been 1982. That was the first year Canada won gold.
The then Soviet Union took gold the first four years of the event, then Sweden topped the field in 1981. The best Canada had managed was a bronze in 1978 when the event was hosted in Montreal and Quebec City.
The Canadian win was on North American soil as the event was co-hosted between Bloomington, Minneapolis, Duluth, Kenora and Winnipeg.
Whether that was the moment of first recognition is unclear. But, certainly the stature of the World Juniors solidified into what it is today through the 1990s, at least in the case of Canadians. A combination of factors was transpiring at that time. To start with Canada began to assert itself at the events. They won gold in 1988, 1990, 1991, and then from 1993 to 1997. That sort of success gets media focus.
And since the world of television was growing with new networks popping up regularly, TSN hit airwaves in Canada in 1984 and SportsNet in 1998 as examples. The World Juniors are a product that is perfect for such networks and television exposure couple with winning made the event what it is today.
Today we live and die with the efforts of the young players. In this country much of our national pride still comes down to how well our hockey teams do on the international stage, and with many of our best players still in the NHL playoffs for the mens’ championship we focus our attention on the juniors.
Our country had another stellar run of dominance winning gold from 2005 to 2009, but since then the team has scuffled. There were silver medals in 2010 and 2011, a bronze in 2012, but the only gold in the past eight tries came in 2015.
Last year the loss was especially bitter, happening on Canadian soil and to the rival Americans.
This year the United States defends their gold on home ice in Buffalo. They face-off against Canada Friday afternoon in a game many will wish was an evening affair for easier viewing or what well could be an important contest in terms of playoff seeding.
The gold medal game is Jan. 5, and if Canada is not in the game, it will be another blow to our national pride, although in the end we need to recognize each team plays hard and in the end someone has to win, and it’s not always the team we might hope.
But the journey to see who does emerge with the gold medals each year is a tradition I am glad has evolved because there have been lots of highlights and fun watching the championships through the years.
