World Junior Championship | The inexplicable rout of Junior Team Canada

For what ? This is the question that everyone has been asking since Thursday evening, following Canada’s embarrassing defeat against the Czech Republic at the 2025 World Juniors. How could the Canadian team crash in such a dismal way?

The plane piloted by Dave Cameron never flew very high in the sky. The victories acquired in preparatory matches were interesting, nothing more, but the preliminary round gave us a series of red flags.

The most optimistic people kept repeating that we should not panic, that Canada could still finish first in Group A.

The flight they hoped for, on December 31, never took place. The engine never took off and the doubts at the start of the tournament proved to be justified.

As a result, Canada lost for the second year in a row against the Czech Republic, which brought the famous question to the forefront.

For what ?

Controversial choices

Let’s look at the composition of the team, deprived of four players from top 10 of the last National Hockey League draft, forward Beckett Sennecke and defensemen Carter Yakemchuk and Zayne Parekh, with Tij Iginla having been out of action just before selection camp.

The selection of only two Quebecers caused discussion among us, but there is no decision more controversial than the non-selection of Michael Misa, the second point scorer in the Ontario Junior League, despite his 64 points in 33 meetings.

The bet was on versatility, with players who could fulfill very specific missions. The problem is that the scorers chosen by Canadian leaders did not score.

For a team which scored a measly 13 goals in five games (compared to 29 for the Czech Republic and the United States!), we are talking about a fairly resounding failure.

Short of explanations

Frozen behind his bench, head coach Dave Cameron did not convince anyone during the tournament. He first struggled to explain his team’s poor performance against Latvia and then the narrow victory against Germany.

The indiscipline of his training? The Ontarian’s response was astounding, as was the energy level and cohesion of his men during the meetings.

“It’s an individual question, a question of character,” he limited himself to saying at the start of the storm. [Les joueurs] have to decide how they should behave and I am sure they will stick to it. »

When the “outside noise” became increasingly deafening, Dave Cameron said he couldn’t afford to leave players out, that the competition was too short to issue reprimands.

Exhausted players?

Rather than giving his players an electric shock, who would have really needed it, the coach opted for rest, deeming them exhausted, even though they were playing at home, in front of their supporters, without having to adjust to the shift. hourly.

To remedy the situation, Cameron decided to cancel workouts, a choice that surprised just about every coach in the country.

The forced landing began to look like a regular crush, even if the club’s goalkeeper, Carter George, really had nothing to reproach himself for.

Pointed out, Cameron says he has “no regrets”, he who bet a lot on Mike Johnston, 67, another veteran of the national program.

Favreau in the press gallery

While the general manager of the Portland Winterhawks – which he has not managed for a year – was behind the bench, Sylvain Favreau, the next generation of the profession at the age of 46, watched the game from the press gallery in a role limited toeye-in-the-sky.

No, for those who are wondering, the Franco-Ontarian of the Drummondville Voltigeurs was not responsible for the protests.

Cameron, a good man, despite everything

Behind the scenes, Dave Cameron has a spotless reputation. His peers say he is attentive, funny and affable, human qualities that we look for to make a hockey club a “family” during a tournament like the World Juniors.

Could it be, however, that the former Senators pilot no longer has the enthusiasm and the grip necessary to push young hockey players of junior age who find themselves under the eye of all hockey fans in the country during the time of the Parties?

The World Juniors have become an exciting tournament where easy matches hardly exist anymore.

They have become almost as rare as Dave Cameron’s defenders over the past two weeks.