December 28/21
Day 3 from the World Junior Hockey Championships featured Canada against qualifier Austria. The tournament has always shown off the skills of the elite level teams from Canada, Finland, the US, Sweden and Russia. The second tier consists of Czechia, Switzerland, Germany and Slovakia. Usually, a country who has been promoted from the “B” pool (eg Austria, Latvia, Kazakhstan etc) rounds out the 10 team loop.
As expected, the Canadian team dominated the qualifier throughout the first, outshooting Austria 25-5 and befittingly out scoring them 5 zip. For the Austrian program, this tournament is about development and a chance to measure themselves against elite players from around the world. A couple of standouts to this reporter were draft eligible Captain Marco Kasper, goalie Leon Somner and a rather large forward named Kilan Ropelle. And, who can ever forget a player named Oskar Maier ?!?
Canadian hilites included an absolute beauty from 16 year old Colind Bedard (his second) and 2 power play goals. Cole Perfetti and Owen Power continued their outstanding paly at both ends.
It’s early in the tournament, so let’s review Canada’s forward units (now down to 12) for tonight:
Perfetti Borque Wright
Johnson McTavish Stankoven
Neighbors Greig Guenther
Cuylie Desnoyers Bedard
Bourgalt (injured – concussion) and Sourdif (suspended) were out of tonight’s contest.
During the second period, Austria showed a little more life (scoring in the last minute) but more importantly for Team Canada fans, as is often the case in these snooze fests, complacency seemed to be settling in for the home squad. Connor Bedard roofed his hat trick goal and that was really the only thing that fans at Edmonton’s Rogers Centre had to cheer for. 6-1 Canada.
News from earlier in the day had Team USA having to forfeit their game against Switzerland due to two of their players testing positive for COVID. Let’s hope that trend is put to a screeching halt and that our beloved tournament can continue unscathed. The US is now 1 and 1.
The young Canadians woke up in the third as Perfetti (a gift @ :27 seconds), Bedard with his fourth (!), McTavish with 2 in :47 seconds and then Mavrik Bourque made the inevitable a reality. In fairness to Austria, this was only their 5th time at this tournament and was last involved in a game VS Canada way back in 1981. Led by Dale Hawerchuk, the Canadians finished that game off at 11-1. Austria got a powerplay goal to make the final 11-2.
HOPPER NOTES: Team Germany is next (tomorrow at 7 pm), they had a hard-earned win against Czechia…next year’s tournament will allow 12 teams (incl Austria) in to the tournament. My suggestion is to have the teams split into 2. An “Elite 6” (Canada, Finland, USA, Sweden, Russia and whomever comes 6th this year) all playing each other once. The “second 6” (Czechia, Germany, Slovakia, Switzerland x 2 qualifiers) will play off a similar 5 game Round Robin. The top 5 “elite” division teams qualify for the quarter-finals as do 3 of the lower “qualifier” teams. The other 4 are eliminated. More meaningful games for the “elite” and a chance for a “B” team to rise to the top.
Discuss – cheers !
Great article!
thanks !