Showcase short on draft sizzle this time
Basically, we’ve been spoiled rotten with the last couple of world junior tournaments.
Really, they’ve been international competitions mixed in with live NHL draft previews, which is just about the ideal way for this tournament to be packaged, marketed and viewed.
So many of the top prospects for the 2015 and 2016 drafts were involved in the last two world juniors that they became not just their usual reliable Go Canada Go holiday fare here, but also an opportunity for fans to get a good look at players likely to be impact NHLers in less than a year.
All seven Canadian teams missed postseason play last year, and five of them — Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Vancou- ver and Calgary — ended up using very high draft selections on players who skated in last winter’s event.
For Maple Leaf fans, the past two world juniors have essentially been scouting missions for saviours to turn this franchise around.
Two years ago, Leaf fans could peruse a world junior event that included the two top prospects, Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel, as well as Lawson Crouse, Mikko Rantanen, Noah Hanifin, Zack Werenski, Brandon Carlo, Pavel Zacha, Ivan Provorov and Timo Meier.
The Leafs ended up taking Mitch Marner, who didn’t play in that tournament, with the No. 4 pick. But passing on all those other talented teenagers, particularly Hanifin, sure added intrigue to Mark Hunter’s pick.
Leaf fans also got an early look at Auston Matthews, who wasn’t eligible until last June. Matthews played at the world juniors for a second time last winter in Finland while on a break from his Swiss club team, leading a U.S. team that had other top draft eligible prospects like Charlie McAvoy, Alex DeBrincat and Matthew Tkachuk. In fact, Matthews started the tournament playing on a line with DeBrincat and Tkachuk.
Canada had only Julien Gauthier, a power forward, while the Swedes had Alexander Nylander, brother of William, already a Leaf draft pick. Finland, meanwhile, brought a team that included winger Patrik Laine, forward Jesse Puljujarvi and defenceman Olli Juolevi, all of whom went in the top five picks of the 2016 draft.
Laine was so dominant that, in some minds, he had surpassed Matthews by draft day, although the Leafs stuck with taking the big centre with the No. 1 pick. Winnipeg hasn’t minded that decision at all.
This year’s world juniors, for better or worse, just won’t be anything like the last two. This one has been hit by the double whammy — few top prospects for next year’s draft, and most of the marquee talents from the last two drafts are already in the NHL.
Next June’s draft isn’t seen as a particularly strong one, for starters, and the best prospects it appears to offer won’t be involved in this tourney. Brandon centre Nolan Patrick and Swedish blue-liner Timothy Liljegren, the top two picks for ’17 on many scorecards, have been sidelined by injury or illness and won’t play.
The best prospects involved are Finnish winger Eeli Tolvanen, currently playing for Sioux City in the USHL, and Nico Hischier of Switzerland, a top scorer with the Halifax Mooseheads.
And that’s about it.
To world junior purists, perhaps, this is ideal, for it will focus attention on the competition more than showdowns between top picks. Canada won’t have a single player involved who is eligible for next summer’s NHL draft as Hockey Canada goes with a very experienced team in an effort to get back into the medals.
The last five years, by Canadian standards, have been very lean, with just one gold (2015) and one bronze (2012). In that time, the Finns have won twice, and the Americans and Swedes once each.
Those Canadian results look even leaner when you understand this has really become a five-team competition. They try to sell this as a 10-team event, but that’s really nonsense. Slovakia, with a bronze in 2015, is the only other country outside of the top five to capture a medal in the last decade.
So really, the fact Canada has only two medals in the last five years when only four other countries are seriously in the running tells you this has been a very unsuccessful period for our national junior program.
That, then, becomes the narrative for this year’s event.
Can Canada regain its historic ability to dominate the world juniors?
This year’s Team Canada, like last year, lacks overwhelming star power up front, and already commentators are suggesting Dominique Ducharme’s team will have to score by committee. That said, they had no problem potting goals in the exhibitions, and there are lots of high NHL picks on the roster.
The defence and goaltending struggled last year in Finland, and that’s where this team needs to be better. Thomas Chabot is the only backliner returning, while two new goalies — Everett’s Carter Hart and Connor Ingram of the Kamloops Blazers — have been assigned the task of giving Canada the kind of high-end goaltending it used to get, but hasn’t for quite some time.
The games are split once again between Montreal and Toronto just like two years ago, except the Bell Centre, not the Air Canada Centre, gets most of the important games this time.
If this were an NHL lockout year, the top countries would be loaded with star talent for this tournament like 2005 in North Dakota. But the NHL is playing, which leaves Montreal and Toronto with a little less sizzle to sell.
This world junior event, you have to believe, will have to work a little harder to get people talking. Damien Cox is the co-host of Prime Time Sports on Sportsnet 590 The FAN. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for The Star. Follow him @DamoSpin. His column appears Tuesday and Saturday.