Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

Marco Scandella #5 of Team Canada celebrates his goal against Switzerland.

When it comes to the world junior tournament, are we becoming 'ugly Canadians?'

We are ready to admit it: we long ago decided to politely avoid covering women’s hockey whenever possible.

Not the intriguing stories on an athlete or personality inside the game. By "avoiding," we’re talking about covering international tournaments that always seem to end the same way — with Canada and the United States meeting in the final.

You see, I never could take a hockey player seriously — man or woman — who, after a 9-1 victory, looked me in the eye and spoke of how a totally overmatched opponent had actually required an all-out effort by Canada, or the outcome might have been different.

Does the problem belong to women’s hockey? Is it my problem?

Likely we’re both to blame. But until there is more than one country in the entire world with even a puncher’s chance of beating our national women’s team, you won’t see me checking in on a major international tournament before the gold medal game. (Not that Team Canada is losing any sleep over that, of course.)

So, as we watch another world junior tournament unfold, we cringe as Canada outscores its opposition 41-7. In the past 20 years Canada has won the tournament 12 times and been in the gold medal game 16 times. It is barely better than the girls, by competitive standards.

As a Canadian, I get it: it is a Canadian thing to win at hockey. But in the big cultural picture, it is completely un-Canadian to beat a no-chance opponent by seven goals and then thump our chests over the result.

That is something Americans have always done, and we’ve never liked that about them.

The lead on the story in my Monday paper tied the whole World Junior thing up inside of 30 words: "Team Canada earned a 6-1 victory over Switzerland on Sunday at the 2010 IIHF world junior hockey championship to advance to the gold-medal game for a ninth straight year."

In the semi-finals of any well-balanced tournament, there shouldn’t be any five-goal games, with the shot clock reading 44-21. Nor should the same team make the final for nine years running — or win or it five years in a row — if there is any true competition going on here.

Hey — we love the hockey. The USA-Sweden semi-final was a fantastic game — because we did not now who would win from puck-drop.

What we’ve tired of over the years is exactly what scares us away from the women’s game: Lopsided affairs where a superior Canadian team pounds on international opponents relentlessly and with impunity.

Then, afterwards, they politely offer up stories on how a scolding by the coach turned a game around, lest it might have been different. Or how team building exercises at the RCMP barracks made Canada cohesive enough to weather the Latvians in a 16-0 rout.

"We won 6-1, but we can be better," Canadian blue-liner Alex Pietrangelo said after the semi-final win.

Truly, these juniors are programmed to destroy.

You know, back when the Americans sent their Dream Team to the 1992 Olympics to mop up the basketball competition, we used to use terms like "Ugly American" to describe that country’s glee with a 60-point win over Uruguay.

We scoffed at NBC, and the way they portrayed that team of millionaire professionals as American heroes, while they pulverized every country that got in its way.

Some of you might recall the days when the Russians brought their Red Army team to the Olympics and world championships. Our amateurs, the second or third tier of Canadian talent, didn’t have a prayer against them, and we were always quick to point out why.

Today, a hockey country as productive as Sweden watches its 29th world junior championships pass by without a gold medal. The Czechs and Finns have, since 1977, won this thing only twice apiece.

The fact is, at this level we are the professionals. Everyone else is amateur by comparison.

Our junior system is so superior to what any other country can offer, a best-on-best tournament like this is almost rigged.

I know why we are basically a one-sport country. It is because there is only one sport in the world that we are the best at, and it’s OK to be proud of that.

But pride and being the international hockey bully has been colliding for some time now. We’re simply too good at the under-20 level, and the fun of winning is wearing off.