I love the World Juniors. It’s an annual hockey tournament that begins on Boxing Day and runs for about ten days. It features (most of) the best players under the age of 20 from the ten best hockey nations.
This year, the tournament is in Vancouver and I have tickets to 21 games. I gave away several round-robin games as Christmas gifts, but will watch all the games featuring Canada and the entire medal round.
I love the tournament for many reasons. It’s extremely fast-paced, exciting hockey. The players can skate at an NHL level, and their other skills are near-NHL calibre. However, they frequently don’t have the experience or polish of pro hockey, so there tends to be a higher rate of hits, turnovers and odd-man rushes.
More importantly, you’re cheering for nations, not corporations. Every player is giving 100% on every shift, because he’s playing for his country and his future. Nobody takes a shift off. If they do, there’s always another player hugnry for their minutes. Every player is honoured to participate, and desperately wants to win.
I watched a couple of games in 2002 in the Czech Republic, and have attended two games of this tournament so far. In both cases, I’ve been so impressed by how informed the fans are. The World Juniors don’t have the cachet of an NHL team. As such, the audience is largely free of corporate mooks, teenagers more interested in their cell phones and guys trying to impress their dates with club seats instead of their hockey knowledge.
The people watching are real fans of the game. Why else would 11,000 Canadians watch a silly mismatch Norway and the USA? There was such an attentive hush in the early minutes of the Finland-Canada game that, despite being up in the nosebleeds, I could clearly hear the Canadian coach yelling at the referee about the time clock.
If you watch one game of hockey in before 2006, watch the Canada-USA game on New Year’s Eve at 4:00pm PST. It features a ton of talent, and should be a war.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Isn’t New Year’s Eve still 2005? 🙂
Good hockey yes, except for the terrible officiating!
The games have been pretty good and the talent shows through from those players that have it. The problem that I have seen so far is the atrocious officiating. The game tonight between Canada and Norway had to be the worst refereed game I have seen in quite a while. Lots of young talent with the players but unfortunately the officials haven’t kept up with them.
I agree. The officiating is always dodgy at international tournaments, but this one has been particularly bad.
I was at the Canada/Norway game today, and it was singularly the worst officiated game I’ve ever seen. You know the referee’s gone mad when the fans are booing when the opposing team receives undeserved penalties.
Ultimately, the officiating favoured the Norwegians, who were slightly less miserable on the powerplay.
Derrick and I went to the USA/Swiss game yesterday afternoon (thanks Darren) and we really enjoyed it. The first two periods were quite boring, but watching the third period live made attending the game very worthwhile. Lots of penalty calls, I agree. I found it quite amusing that Jack Johnson recieved 3 or 4 penalties… but that’s just me 😉 GO CANADA!
goo russia yeaaa RUSSIA wan the 2008 hockey champion so huppy