By Andrew Chong, Editor /
With a little help from an NHL lockout, this year’s Canadian Junior team might have been even better than the dominant 2005 team which is widely regarded as the best World Juniors team ever.
In 2004/05, the NHL lockout meant fans were deprived of the best hockey league in the world and many minor pro players were pushed out of jobs by NHLers.
At the same time, many leagues benefited from the influx of stray NHL players looking for a temporary home. Attendance records were being broken in all sorts of non-NHL arenas, NHL players were winning league MVP awards and scoring titles in non-NHL leagues, and television ratings were higher than ever for events like the Memorial Cup.
The 2005 IIHF World Junior Championship was perhaps the greatest beneficiary of the work stoppage because there was no threat of eligible World Junior players being held onto by their NHL teams. Practically all of the top, eligible U-20 players were available for the tournament.
And Canada cashed in on the opportunity.
Patrice Bergeron, Dion Phaneuf, Sidney Crosby, Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry, Andrew Ladd, Braydon Coburn, Cam Barker, Shea Weber, Brent Seabrook, Jeff Carter, and Mike Richards made up the core of a team that wouldn’t have had so many weapons had the NHL been active.
After a seven-year gold medal drought, Canada obliterated their competition en route to a gold medal and outscored opponents 47-7. They toppled Alex Ovechkin, Evgeni Malkin and Team Russia by a score of 6-1 in the championship final.
The star power on the 2010 Canadian Junior team is not nearly as illustrious, but imagine if all of Canada’s eligible U-20s were made available for the tournament like they were in 2005.
John Tavares, Matt Duchene, Evander Kane, Ryan O’Reilly, Tyler Myers, Michael Del Zotto, and Jamie Benn are among the 18- and 19-year-olds making significant contributions at the NHL level.
On top of that, Steven Stamkos – who is going in to his second NHL season – is amazingly still just 19-years-old and is eligible for this year’s team.
Even with 2009 top scorer Cody Hodgson sitting out with a back injury, Canada could fill out this hypothetical roster with some very high-end U-20s from the current roster: Brayden Schenn, Nazem Kadri, Alex Pietrangelo, Ryan Ellis, Colten Teubert, Jordan Eberle, and Taylor Hall.
So which team is better: the lockout-bolstered 2005 group or this hypothetical 2010 team?
I suppose the only place where they could actually play each other is within the digital realm of an EA Sports’ NHL 10 simulation—and ever then, the player attributes would be skewed against the younger 2010 group.
So it’s really up to the individual to decide which team is better. And there would certainly be a strong case for either side.
But one thing we do know for certain is that Canada consistently produces teenagers that develop so quickly that they play themselves out of the World Junior ranks and right into full-time NHL jobs—unless of course the NHL is locked-out. |