Canada Repeat as World Junior Champions

Over recent years, the World Junior Hockey Championships have provided plenty of parody, with 5 different winners spanning over the last 13 years including Canada, United States, Finland, Sweden and Russia. None of which managed to bring gold home in back-to-back tournaments in that time. The last program who managed to repeat as champions was Team Canada, after dominating the tournament from 2005-2009, Canada earned 5 straight World Junior Championship golds in a row.

This year’s Canadian roster featured 8 returning gold medalists from the year prior to round out a group that were keen on repeating.

• Connor Bedard
• Ethan Del Mastro
• Nathan Gaucher
• Zack Ostapchuk
• Brennan Othmann
• Joshua Roy
• Logan Stankoven
• Olen Zellweger

After dropping their first game of the tournament 5-2 to Czech Republic, Canada seemed to find another gear and refused to lose again winning 6 straight to cap it off.

Finishing with a 4-2-0-1 record and a +27 goal differential in just 7 games, Canada thoroughly dominated the remainder, following their opening slip up.

Gold medal game recap

1st Period

The game started off with a bang for Canada, as Dylan Guenther unleashed an absolute rocket into the top corner of the net over the blocker-side shoulder of Czech net minder Tomas Suchanek. Quite literally a goal every Canadian hockey fan has tried to pull off countless times in their driveway.

2nd period

The Red and White weren’t done yet, as Captain Canada and birthday boy Shane Wright made his impression on the game just after coming out of the 1st intermission. Wright danced through 3 Czechs before lofting a backhand underneath the bar to double Canada’s lead and send Halifax, Nova Scotia’s Scotiabank Centre into an absolute frenzy.

3rd Period mayhem

The favourites managed to hold onto that 2-0 lead until disasters struck in the forms of Jiri Kulich and Jakub Kos. The Czechs scored twice just under a minute apart to tie the contest with just 6:36 left to play in the 3rd.

With the game knotted at 2, the gold on the line and regulation coming to a close we needed overtime. An overtime which #TeamCanada twitter was incredibly confident going into considering the inability for the Czechs to double-team Connor Bedard in a 3-on-3.

Overtime

Well #TeamCanada twitter was right, because Bedard and the Canadians were far too much for the Czechs in overtime. After almost 7 minutes the Czech defence seemed to be holding on by a thread, when a perfectly executed, 2-on-1 rush from Joshua Roy and Dylan Guenther ended in a golden goal, and earned Canada’s U20s another dance in the winners circle of the World Junior Hockey Championship.

There’s no better highlight than a Canadian golden goal.

Connor Bedard’s historic performance

Canada’s 17-year-old phenom Connor Bedard’s performance at the 2023 tournament etched his name into not only the Canadian record book, but that of the tournament. With this being his 2nd tournament and rather unlikely he returns in 2024 (probably terrorizing the NHL by then), it’s time to compare him to the tournaments career all-time top point getters.

Bedard became the 1st Canadian to record 20+ points in a single WJC, a feat only completed by 6 players prior. In the process, he became the 4th-highest career all-time point-getter, and the 4th-highest all-time single tournament point-getter.

Some key takeaways from the table, Bedard is the only 17-year-old to ever reach the 20 point plateau. Which begs the question, how does he compare to other 17-year-olds in the tournament’s history.

By the numbers he seems to be the best 17-and-under to ever grace the tournament, topping even Jags and the Great One.

How does Bedard compare to his fellow Canadian World Junior Championship history-makers?

He’s the best, of course he is. How about in terms of a single tournament?

It’s safe to say we’re talking about the best Canadian World Junior player of all-time to date. He has all the statistics and the hardware to back it up, with 2 golds and being the youngest Most Valuable Player in the tournaments history.

Junior Hockey belongs to Canada

This year’s gold medal marked the 20th to be brought home by a Canadian World Junior team, by far the most out of any country.

For the time being, junior hockey will remain Canada’s to lose, and we don’t seem keen on letting it go anytime soon. Is it too much to ask for a three-peat?

(Photo: The Canadian Press/David Calabrese)