Congratulations to the U.S. junior squad for grabbing gold in Ufa after their 3-1 win over Sweden, and cheers to Russia for winning bronze, although I say it with a severe case of lack of enthusiasm after Team Canada fell to the home country 6-5 in overtime. Canada clawed their way back a couple of [...]

The U.S. dominated throughout in their 5-1 crusher of the Canadians in World Junior semi-final action, and if there’s a solid reason why Canada just didn’t show up on this day, I’d like to know why. Was it coaching? Was it nerves, or lack of leadership, or lack of sleep? Whatever it was, the Americans [...]

Originally I posted that the World Junior semi-finals would be held on Friday, which is what I had read on certain sites. I’m not going to mention any names, but one in particular starts with T, and also has SN in the name. They were wrong and because I believed them, so was I. Unless [...]

Team Canada downed the Russians 4-1 on Russian soil at Unrestrictedfreeagentgrad, (Ufa) and although the Russian squad boasts a couple of players everyone’s talked about for a year or two – Nail Yakupov and Mikhail Grigorenko, the Canadians have guys called Grit and Heart and Malcolm Subban in their lineup, with Subban playing great between the pipes and [...]

Team Canada edged the U.S. 2-1 today and now hold a perfect 3 wins and no losses, while the Americans have put themselves in a bit of a pickle and must beat Slovakia tomorrow to stay alive. So at this moment, it’s good to be a Canadian. Not so good for me personally though, was [...]

Team Canada found themselves down 3-1 to the Slovakians midway through the second period before switching to fourth gear, pumping in five unanswered big ones, and ending up with a nice, convincing 6-3 win over this somewhat disciplined Eastern European club that favours a bottling-up type of game that can often be effective, as shown [...]

It’s been two games for Germany in this year’s World Championships, and the hardest working guy so far has been the goal judge behind the German net. First, 9-3 Canada, and today, the Americans handed the beleaguered bunch an 8-0 spanking, with Montreal’s future star Alex Galchenyuk scoring a goal and adding two assists. Galchenyuk [...]

It’s the time of year to think of others less fortunate, and my heart goes out to Russian World Junior ticket scalpers, who might have to soon think about another occupation. How can they sell overpriced tickets to games in an arena where there were so many empty seats, elephants would be free to roam? [...]

Just yesterday I wrote a small piece about Rene Bourque and right away he hurts himself (an abdominal injury during workouts) and is out for several months. So if I have this weird power, I’d now like to talk about Brad Marchand. Brad comes from Halifax, played in two different World Junior Championships, and has a [...]

It was the only goal of the game, scored by the son of an Iranian father and Swedish mother, and it brought to a close the 2012 World Juniors in spectacular fashion. Mika Zibanejad scored in overtime to give Sweden the gold in this year’s World Junior Championship, their first gold in 31 years, and what [...]