World juniors have come far since '77 debut at the Forum
Hockey fans in bad need of a fix will finally get one when the IIHF world junior hockey championship begins Christmas Day in Edmonton with three games scheduled.
Canada is slated to play its first game on Boxing Day against Germany (6 p.m., TSN, RDS).
The first official world junior championship was held at the Forum in Montreal in 1977 with an estimated crowd of 1,200 on hand to watch Team Canada — featuring a 16-year-old Wayne Gretzky — beat the U.S. 6-3 in the tournament opener. On New Year's Day, there were just over 2,000 fans at the Forum when Canada lost 6-5 to Sweden in the semifinals and had to settle for a bronze medal, while Russia went on to win gold.
The tournament has grown into a huge event since then and has been a gold mine for TSN and RDS with huge audiences tuning in to watch games during the holiday period. The gold medal game in Edmonton is slated for Jan. 5.
Canada's 4-3 gold-medal victory over Russia in the Czech Republic at last year's tournament attracted an average audience of 4.2 million viewers on TSN and RDS, becoming the most-watched world junior game in history broadcast from Europe.
The most-watched game played in Canada was the 2015 gold medal game, which attracted an average audience of seven million on TSN and RDS as Canada beat Russia 5-4 at Toronto's Air Canada Centre.
With the NHL season not starting until at least Jan. 13, the world junior tournament should be a big ratings hit with hockey fans stuck at home because of COVID-19. This year's tournament will be held in a bubble in Edmonton — just like the NHL playoffs were — and there won't be any fans in the seats at Rogers Place.
“The appetite for this year's tournament is incredible,” TSN'S Gord Miller — who has worked at 28 world junior tournaments and will be doing his 20th as the main play-by-play commentator in Edmonton — said during a phone interview last month.
“Everywhere I go, people are asking me about it. People are always excited about it, but I think even more so this year there's a real hunger for it. It looks like most of the top players are going to be there, so it's going to be pretty interesting.”
Is Miller surprised at how big the tournament has become?
“It doesn't surprise me that it's gotten as big as it has,” he said. “I think what surprises me is that people don't realize how big it is in other countries. This thing is huge in Sweden, Finland, Russia, the Czech Republic. Countries like that, it's a big deal. Even though the games quite often air in the middle of the night, there are bidding wars for (TV rights) and the ratings are enormous.
“What I like about it is it's a different cast of characters every year, so it's a clean slate,” Miller added.
That makes Miller's job more difficult because he has to learn the names and numbers of the players from all 10 teams.
“The joke I say is people always say, `How do you get all those names right at the world junior?' I say, `How do you know I'm right? You don't know those players,'” Miller said with a chuckle.
“Doing the world junior is hard because you've never seen these players before,” he added. “If you called me at four o'clock today and told me to go down and call the Montreal (Canadiens) game tonight, I could do it. It wouldn't be great, but I could do it. You could not do that with a world junior game because you don't know the players. So that's one of the great things about it.”
What's going to make this year's tournament even harder is that Miller — and the players — will be living in a hotel bubble. Miller has experience after living in the Toronto bubble during the NHL playoffs.
“I was a bit surprised at how difficult mentally it is,” he said about the Toronto experience. “It's a mental grind being in there because you literally can't go anywhere else. You look out your window, in my case it was August and September in Toronto, and I'm looking out the window of the Royal York (hotel) and seeing people biking by and walking by, going for dinner and all those things.
“You can't do those things. I'd never complain about it, obviously, because you're happy to be working. But mentally, it's very difficult. It's hard to be in that sort of sealed environment for that long.
“It's going to be different in Edmonton,” Miller added. “Obviously, it's going to be colder. I could sit outside in the bubble in Toronto, but we won't be doing much of that in Edmonton. But we'll be really busy. I think it will be great to be back working.”
It will also be great for fans to be able to watch hockey again.