The WJC is different than, say, the Super Bowl. If you've seen one Super Bowl, you've seen them all--okay, maybe the games are different but the experience around the game is more or less the same. The same corporate tents, the same scalpers demanding five figures, maybe even six figures for seats, the same excessive halftime shows by some used-to-be-A-list performer, same monster stadiums. Not so the under-20s.
Jarome Iginla and Jose Theodore stole a semi-final game from the Russians back in 1996, amazing performances both, but there were Irish wakes in Boston that night were the crowd was louder. And larger. That was the first WJC tournament that I worked. Halfway up in the seats you could here the players yelling for the puck. The crowd for the final, a Canadian win over Sweden, was even smaller and quieter. It should be noted that they had the snowstorm of the century three times in the course of about eight days in Boston, but I doubt that the weather stopped that many people from making it out to the game. Fact is, you couldn't even find the scores of tournament games in the Boston Globe heading into the knock-out round. There was plenty of high school sport and even NCAA hockey--not just BC and BU but small-college stuff--but nothing about the world's best teenage players playing for gold.
My three other favorite weird scenes: 1. Watching Canadian bench-warmers (including former Toronto first-rounder Jeff Ware) trying to get warm because there was ice on both sides of the boards in the Geneva rink back in 1997. No rubber mats, just ice to stand on. It was minus-six on the streets of Geneva, colder in the arena. 2. Being among about 300 witnesses to Canada losing to Kazakhstan in an old club rink in Hameenlinna in Finland in 1998. Of that 300 I could probably name at least 100. 3. Wandering the halls of historic (and virtually empty) Luzhniki Arena in Moscow and ordering very risky coffee at the snack bar from women who bore an uncanny resemblance to this catwalk talent. Who would have figured that the host Russians with Ilya Kovalchuk would crash and burn and not even make the medal round in 2001.
On occasion there have been healthy crowds when the game has been played in Europe. They packed them in when the host Finns won gold in 1998 in Helsinki--great crowd, great arena, great final going to OT. Decent enough crowds when the tournament was played in Sweden and the Czech Republic--knowledgeable fans but still empty seats, even with Canadian tourists.
It's an entirely different experience when the under-20s get to Canada. My favorite and certainly the coldest was Winnipeg in 1999. The town completely embraced the WJC. Make that a region, with organizers setting it up so that smaller towns would get to host tournament teams with no quite the profile of the big fish. Only minus-40 tempertaures with minus-60 wind-chills headed off what would have been hockey's biggest tail-gate party. The tournaments in Halifax and Vancouver were almost as enthusiastic. The 2005 tournament in Winnipeg South (a.k.a Grand Forks) was almost as cold.
The conventional wisdom is that Canadian teams are at a disadvantage when the tournament is played in Europe: Road games on Olympic-sized rinks with five or six-hour time changes (or worse for the kids from B.C.) I don't buy it completely. The Canadian teams that lost to the Russians in Winnipeg and Halifax felt incredible pressure. The Russians, particularly in Halifax, played fast and loose and the Canadian teams were as tight as frog skin. A lot of pundits are touting Sweden or even Russia to win this tournament and the U.S. figures to be stronger than usual (with a team that leans heavily on CHL talent). That might be an accurate read of the talent in this tournament ... and it might also take a bit of the weight of the Worlds of the Canadian teens' shoulders.
