SportsHockeyWorld Juniors

Canada heads to World Juniors gold medal game in front of tiny crowd

Adam Laskaris
Adam Laskaris
|
Aug 19 2022, 10:45 pm
Canada heads to World Juniors gold medal game in front of tiny crowd
IIHF

Canada is, once again, heading to the gold medal game at the World Juniors.

On Friday afternoon, Canada topped Czechia by a 5-2 score to advance to tomorrow’s gold medal matchup.

In many ways, it’s the expected outcome of a perennial favourite on home soil.

But it’s safe to say these World Juniors have a different, icky feel behind them.

Attendance figures for the quarterfinal games of the tournament were all under 1,000 for three of the four quarterfinal games, with Canada-Switzerland bringing in 4,898 people.

Edmonton’s Rogers Place arena was sparsely crowded with just 5,092 in attendance for the semifinal game (including a closed upper bowl) for a myriad of jarring reasons.

There is, for one, the ongoing inquiries into the sexual assault allegations made against members of past junior teams representing Hockey Canada that have left a sour taste in the mouths of many Canadians.

There’s the fact it’s a summer tournament that began last December before being rescheduled and replayed in mid-August to go along with high ticket prices and a rapidly changing economy.

There’s the fact puck drop was at 2 pm local time on Friday afternoon, and 4 pm Eastern time made it in the middle of the work day even for the Ontario and Quebec crowd.

Additionally, there’s also a key team missing — Russia — who was barred from this and other major international hockey tournaments by the IIHF due to the country’s ongoing military presence in Ukraine.

TV numbers for the tournament are not yet publicly available, but they’re likely massively down as well from a normal year.

So yes, Canada is in the gold medal game once again, but it’ll hardly be viewed as a tournament to remember, even if they do pull out the victory tomorrow.

World Juniors semifinal goals

Canada held off the Czechs pretty easily in this one, scoring the game’s first four goals despite a fairly even 26-24 shot count through the first 40 minutes.

Kent Johnson scored the game’s opening goal around 10 minutes into the opening frame.

The 2023 projected first overall pick Connor Bedard then doubled Canada’s lead just over five minutes later with a sneaky shot.

Logan Stankoven gave Canada a strong cushion midway through the second.

And to round it out, Mason McTavish added Canada’s fourth goal.

After a pair of Czech goals, Joshua Roy closed out the game for Canada.

Canada will be playing the winner of Sweden-Finland in tomorrow’s gold medal game. Tickets are aplenty on Ticketmaster, starting at $58 each.

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