Gone are the days when this was about “supremacy.”
Parity, it’s clear, has hit the World Junior Hockey Championship.
Not that some country won’t ever again rip off five gold medals in a row, like Canada did from 1993 through ’97 and again from 2005 to ’09, but it certainly seems far less likely than it was just a few years ago.
We’ve had five different winners in the past five years, and that’s with the once powerful Czechs not having won since 2001. The U.S. has won in Russia, the Finns have won in Sweden, the Russians have won in Buffalo and the Swedes emerged as champions from the Calgary-Edmonton event.
Anybody can win anywhere now.
Whichever country wins this year in Helsinki will be able to claim gold medals, but not really more than that. There’s precious little evidence that any country is doing a whole lot more right than any other, although because Canada takes this particular tournament more seriously and supplies more players to the NHL than any other country, it’s victories have historically been interpreted as either good defeating evil or hockey’s homeland knocking off challengers from those who learned the game from Canada.
Politics have sometimes been the backdrop to this tournament, particularly in the days of the Soviet powerhouses. These days, heck, U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump is snuggling up to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Nobody seems to hate anybody anymore. We’re all friends.
If there is a country capable of really owning this competition in the future, it just might be the United States, and for reasons as much about demographics as anything particularly brilliant about the American hockey system. This year’s U.S. team will feature key players from Scottsdale, Arizona (Auston Matthews), St. Louis (Clayton Keller, Matthew Tkachuk and Luke Opilka) and Colorado Springs (Brandon Carlo). These aren’t just birthplaces for these players, but places where they grew up in those minor hockey systems and learned the game. That’s new.
There will be the usual players on Team USA from Minnesota, Michigan and the U.S. northeast, but America is producing more players from more diverse parts of the country than ever before. California, Texas and Florida are generating talent, and indeed, Jakob Chychrun, a top prospect for the 2016 NHL Draft, spent his formative years playing in Boca Raton, Fla., but ended up exercising his option to play for Canada, although he was cut from the world junior roster.
The U.S. had three of the top eight NHL Draft picks last year, and could have as many as 10 first-rounders this year as the U.S. National Team Development Program continues to churn out prospects appealing to NHL talent hounds. The Americans won the world juniors in 2010 and 2013, and after finishing fifth last year in Toronto-Montreal, are coming back with former NHL and Olympic head coach Ron Wilson behind the bench planning to get into the medals again.
The Americans are coming with sheer numbers more now than ever before. That could really change the balance of this tournament over time.
Finland, meanwhile, should be a formidable host, and suddenly the Finns are producing a commodity they have rarely produced before: size. In wingers Jesse Puljujarvi and Patrik Laine, Finland will feature two hulking forwards the likes of which that country hasn’t produced in significant numbers previously.
Sweden won gold in 2012 and silvers the next two years. This year, they’re bringing a group of older defencemen plus first-rounders Gabriel Carlsson and Jacob Larsson, as well as the brother act of William and Alexander Nylander up front.
Russia, meanwhile, has developed a national under-18 program that it hopes will generate players in the same way the U.S. program now located in Plymouth, Mich., has. Although it will take time for that talent to work its way through the system.
Canada, the most dominant country in this event for the past 20 years, has tinkered with the process of selecting its team, and there are indications the Canadians are starting to emphasis skill over characteristics more associated with checkers and role players. Goaltending has been a big focus for Canada, with the Canadian Hockey League now having banned European netminders from playing in any of its three leagues. Last year, Zach Fucale backstopped the team that won gold, but Canada really hasn’t had a dominant player at the position since Steve Mason was named the tournament’s top goalie in 2008.
But in general, it just doesn’t seem like one country has all the answers right now. That might not please Canadians who love to celebrate gold medal efforts over the Christmas holidays, but it is making for a better and more competitive tournament. Canada used to be the default favourite most years, but not at this tournament, which at the outset appears to be a very close battle between Canada, Sweden, the U.S. and Finland.
Which means the Russians will probably win. Parity has taken over the world juniors.