Canadians dominate Swiss, 8-1, in World Junior tune-up
OPINION
If you’re ever looking to gather a crowd in Hamilton, history says there’s one surefire way to do it.
Free double doubles for everyone? Well, yeah, that would work, but it’s not what we had in mind.
The easiest way is to simply host an international sporting event involving some folks wearing the Maple Leaf. Canada Cups always did it. The pre-women’s World Cup soccer friendly between Canada and England a couple summers ago did it. A World Junior Hockey championship tune-up game in 2008 worked. There are other examples.
The evidence says we love these big, one-off events. So it could hardly be counted as a surprise that 12,562 showed up at FirstOntario Centre Friday night in Hamilton to watch Canada play Switzerland in their final tuneup before the World Junior tournament launches for real on Boxing Day.
Dillon Dube scored twice and added an assist to power Canada past the Swiss 8-1.
The big crowd was young, heavily decked out in red and white, and enthusiastic. Heck, there was even a marriage proposal (she said “yes”).
While smaller than the last time a pre-tournament game was held in the building — nine years ago it was so snowy the team arrived late to the rink — it was still the largest hockey crowd of the year in this city.
The obvious conclusion is that Hamilton should consider making a pitch to host this event sometime in the not-too-distant future. If this many people are eager to show up for an essentially meaningless exhibition game, surely they’d come back for the real thing.
Would be nice. However, after the Canadian Hockey League chose not to hold the Memorial Cup here because of deficiencies it cited with FirstOntario Centre, it seems like a stretch to imagine the place would be chosen for a world tournament.
There’s also some question about whether this area — not just Hamilton but the broader region — would buy in enough to make it work.
A story in The Buffalo News this week quoted one of the organizers saying only a third as many ticket packages had sold this time compared to the last time the event was there in 2011. And 60 per cent of the tickets back then were bought by Canadians. This time that number is 35 per cent.
Could the fact that Canada has won just one gold medal since 2010 be having an impact? Could the lack of any huge superstars a la Connor McDavid, Eric Lindros or John Tavares on this team be causing some slippage in interest?
Perhaps. It’s always more fun when we’re on top and clubbing everyone with the most-dazzling young players in the world.
But there’s still plenty of evidence that this event is still just fine, thank you very much. As many as 45,000 people are expected to show up at NewEra Field — home of the Buffalo Bills — for an outdoor Canada-U.S. game on Friday. There’s never been a crowd close to that size for this level of hockey. That same report in The Buffalo News says hotel rooms are full and restaurants are expecting huge business through the tournament.
So the more likely answer is that if there is a small sag in interest, it comes from the fact that the event was held just down the highway in Toronto in two of the past three years. Or people are going to that outdoor game, so no need to go to others.
What it means is that Hamilton absolutely should throw its hat into the ring again at some point, arena issues or not. Just not right away. The event has to get out of this area for a bit to rebuild the hunger.
But someday again? A big house for an exhibition game should give you all the answer you need.