OTTAWA — Canada’s expectations at the world juniors every holiday season are to win gold and make unforgettable memories for Canadian hockey fans. Unfortunately, the 2025 Canadian world junior team made its own history by becoming the first team since 1981 that failed to finish top-four in back-to-back years, falling 4-3 to Czechia in the quarterfinals on Thursday night.
Last year, a flukey shot bounced off Canadian Oliver Bonk to secure their defeat; this year they gave up a last-minute goal to Adam Jecho.
What’s deja vu in Czech?
This time, the loss felt more inevitable; it was no fluke. It began on the first shift, when Canada lost the puck in transition, leading to a two-on-one that Czechia capitalized on, with Petr Sikora opening the scoring 43 seconds in.
Canada’s coach, Dave Cameron, acknowledged his team could never recover.
He was asked after the game what he could have done differently. “If I knew the answer to that, I would [have] been doing that.”
After Latvia beat Canada in one of the biggest upsets in world junior history, it was clear that Canada was in trouble, despite general manager Peter Anholt suggesting otherwise after the game. It felt predestined.
The start to Thursday night’s game summed up Canada’s tournament.
It was woeful. The team took needless penalties at every turn, struggled to score, their coach didn’t play the best players he had and he probably didn’t have the best players Canada could have fielded.
To start with, too many penalties would be an answer. Cameron was asked before the Czechia game how they would know if they had become better disciplined.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow at 7:30,” he said.
Well, we found out. Canada generated a power play after giving up the early goal. But it took only four seconds for Calum Ritchie to neutralize the advantage with a horrific tripping penalty. Then Cole Beaudoin hit Sikora with a knee-on-knee that led to a five-minute major.
Canada briefly tied the game with a shorthanded goal but then Czechia reclaimed the lead 2-1 on the power play when Canadian defenceman Sam Dickinson inadvertently scooped the puck into his own net as he tried to clear it.
Canada took 10 minutes of penalties against Czechia (not including Beaudoin’s major penalty), preventing any sustained pressure, repeating a pattern that saw them total 113 penalty minutes in five games —the most of any team by a mile.
Even when the team was at five-on-five, it couldn’t generate enough offence, partially because their best players weren’t playing.
Canada’s most dynamic player, the 17-year-old Gavin McKenna, played an average of just 15:23 throughout the tournament. Cameron finally relented and moved McKenna up to the top line with Easton Cowan and Ritchie mid-way through the quarterfinal, where McKenna played 18:41. The line buzzed when it was on the ice but couldn’t find the back of the twine.
Perhaps Cameron could have got his players in sync through the tournament with more reps.
Strangely, on the day following Canada’s loss to Latvia, the Canadian team didn’t practise; the day after losing to the U.S., they didn’t practise; and on game day in a do-or-die matchup against Czechia, they didn’t practise.
Cameron’s rationale for having fewer practices was peculiar for a team composed of teenagers.
“Because we were exhausted,” said Cameron. “There’s no system for tired hockey players.”
On Thursday, it seemed as though Canada would survive the first period down only 2-1 when the hapless Dickinson pinched to try to force offence and was burned with the Czechs racing down on another two-on-one. To add insult to misery, Czechia later claimed a 3-1 lead with just 2.1 seconds left in the period.
Dickinson wouldn’t have been asked to do so much heavy lifting offensively if Canada had put more pure talent on their roster. Canada left defencemen Zayne Parekh and Carter Yakemchuk sitting at home. Both had scored at a higher rate per game than all of Canada’s defence at the junior level aside from Dickinson and Matthew Schaefer, who broke his collarbone in the second game of the tournament.
Meanwhile, high scoring forwards Beckett Sennecke and Michael Misa were also left off the team. Why? Canada inserted checkers in their lineup such as Tanner Howe, Mathieu Cataford, Ethan Gauthier, and Cole Beaudoin with the goal of being more defensively sound, but their opponents played Czechbook hockey to shut the team down (a joke for the sake of levity).
The Canadians couldn’t score, finishing with 11 goals in five games with the lowest shooting percentage in the tournament at 6.34 per cent.
Canada’s special teams also let them down. Canada finished in the bottom-half of the tournament, running a 74.1 per cent penalty kill and a 21.1 per cent power play, both ranked sixth in the tournament.
The power play was more effective against Czechia. It got them back in the game when Porter Martone made a wonderful tip to cut the lead to 3-2. Then they played their best period of the tournament, outshooting Czechia 14 to six. Bradly Nadeau scored by finishing off a rebound to tie the game 3-3, seemingly sending the game to overtime. However, they were unable to capitalize off many more of their chances.
In the end, ill-timed penalties bit them in the you-know-what when Andrew Gibson took a kneeing penalty with less than three minutes left in the game. With 39.4 seconds left, Jecho sniped a shot past Carter George which the goaltender will be thinking about for a long, long time.
It ended for Canada the way it was bound to — allowing a goal on the kill after an untimely penalty.
McKenna, likely the face of Canada’s team next year, was not too pleased with the officiating.
“Speaks for itself, it was terrible,” said McKenna.
If you want to go glass half full, he is the future of Canadian hockey. A lot needs to change for McKenna and Canadian fans to replace tears of sadness with ones of joy.
The 2025 world juniors in Ottawa were supposed to bring a flurry of memorable moments in Canadian hockey history, such as the Summit Series in 1972. Now, it’s time for a different form of a summit. This one will be needed within the organization of Hockey Canada.
What’s clear is Hockey Canada needs a new approach to this tournament so that their failure to make the medal round is a blip and not a trend.
