World Junior Preview: Try to ignore the pall over Edmonton
The tournament is mired in controversy and being held in the dog days of summer, but it will be worth watching. And, oh yeah, Finland is going to win it all
The Hockey Canada and the World Junior Championship brands are in such tatters in Canada these days that it’s easy to forget that there is a very real tournament featuring young men who had nothing to do with the morass in which hockey culture finds itself, and they’ll be taking the ice starting Tuesday in Edmonton. There are 25 Canadian teenagers and 225 from nine other countries who didn’t ask for any of this.
They have nothing to do with the stain the 2018 Canadian World Junior team has put on the game. They have nothing to do with Hockey Canada’s ham-handed efforts to manage the scandal. And they certainly didn’t ask for this event to be shut down by COVID and replayed in the dogs days of summer.
But that’s where we are. Those factors have undoubtedly cast an enormous pall over the 2022 WJC to the point where it all feels kind of forced. It reminds one of the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs, played in the middle of the summer in a bubble basically so the NHL could live up to its agreement with its broadcast partners. In so many ways, this is the same thing.
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