Canada's Boxing Day Tradition of the World Junior Hockey Championships will again be in full throttle on Boxing Day as 10 Junior Hockey countries will battle it out over a nine day stretch with a total of a possibility of 31 games to decide who will be crowned 2016 IIHF World Junior Hockey Champions.
As always, TSN's family of channels will have wall to wall coverage of the World Juniors. It has became an annual event for Canadian hockey fans as they get to watch the best players who are Under 20 face off for glory.
This shouldn't come as a surprise, in the past, what turned out to be players who went on to have Hall Of Fame Careers have played in this tournament. Sidney Crosby, Eric Lindros and Mario Lemieux lead a long and star studded list of NHL greats that have played at the World Juniors.
In a sense, it is Canada's version of March Madness that cultivates America for a two week span in March. For this Tournament, teams are divided into two groups of five and the groups are determined by last years results.
From then, the top 4 teams will advance to the Quarterfinals and will be seeded to according to how they finished in the group. For the 5th place finishers, they will play a best out of three to determine who gets relegated for next year. In the rare case where next years host gets relegated, they will stay in the top division and the next worst team will get relegated.
This format is a relatively new, they decided to increase the amount of Quarterfinal teams to 6 to 8 in a attempt to try to get more teams a chance in advancing to the Quarterfinals. The downside is the group stage is less important as their is less of an advantage to finishing first in the group as their is no first round bye.
Some years are more memorable than other years. For instance, 2005 in Grand Forks North Dakota has a special spot in every Canadian Hockey fans heart. That year, because of the NHL lockout, Canada sent one of the most dominant teams to the World Junior history. In fact, to say that the team was an All-Star team and were way above the rest of the competition would be a complete understatement.
Fast forward two years in Leksand, Sweden where Canada played one of the most intense games in World Junior history when they defeated USA in the Semi Finals 2-1 in a SO. As nerve-racking of a hockey game it was, the Shootout was even more breathtaking as Jonathan Towes scored three different times in the Shootout. Carey Price sealed the deal with a save to send Canada to the Gold Medal game. This was a moment in Canadian Hockey history where fans will always remember where they were when Canada won.
These are just a couple of many amazing moments for Canada in the past decade. The tournament got big for the Canadians in 1982 when they won the gold in Minnesota and the arena didn't have a CD of the Canadian National anthem. Since than Canada has thrived at the World Juniors by collecting a total of 15 Gold Medals.
This year, Canada looks to defend their 2015 WJ Gold as Victoria Royals player Joe Hicketts, Vancouver Canucks Forward Jake Virtanen and Erie Otters superstar Dylan Strome lead the charge for the Canadians who bring a seven game winning streak as a team dating back to last year. While the team still has a way to go until they reach the level of the 45 game stretch that they had from 2005-2011 where they went a relentless 42-1-2.
Here are this years Groups:
Group A[edit]
Pos Team Pld W OTW OTL L GF GA GD Pts Qualification
1 Canada 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Advance to Quarterfinals
2 Denmark 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 Sweden 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4 Switzerland 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
5 United States 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Advance to Relegation
Pos Team Pld W OTW OTL L GF GA GD Pts Qualification
1 Canada 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Advance to Quarterfinals
2 Denmark 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 Sweden 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4 Switzerland 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
5 United States 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Advance to Relegation
Group B[edit]
Pos Team Pld W OTW OTL L GF GA GD Pts Qualification
1 Belarus 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Advance to Quarterfinals
2 Czech Republic 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 Finland (H) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4 Russia 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
5 Slovakia 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Advance to Relegation
Pos Team Pld W OTW OTL L GF GA GD Pts Qualification
1 Belarus 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Advance to Quarterfinals
2 Czech Republic 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 Finland (H) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4 Russia 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
5 Slovakia 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Advance to Relegation
To sum everything up, this tournament is one of the best holiday traditions and if you are want to see the stars of tomorrow, today I highly suggesting getting into this tournament.
