World Junior Championship | No, an all-Quebec team would not have done better…

The failures of the Canadian team at the World Junior Championship awakened the Quebec patriotic fiber of many fans.

But to say that Canada’s team has struggled in recent weeks due to too few Quebecers in the team or that a junior Quebec team would not have done worse is either candor… or blindness. voluntary.

The two Quebecers on the Canadian team, Ethan Gauthier and Mathieu Cataford, played a supporting role. The first played around ten minutes against the Czech Republic in the quarter-final, the second seven minutes. Gauthier was shut out in five games, Cataford had one goal in five games.

Gauthier, a second-round pick of the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2023, and Cataford, a third-round pick of Vegas that same year, are solid players in the junior ranks, but not superstars.

We could have included Caleb Desnoyers in the team without causing surprise. This 17-year-old young man, 50 points in 30 games in Moncton, will likely be drafted in the top 10 next summer.

But on this account, the exclusion of Beckett Sennecke (18 years old, third overall pick by Anaheim in 2024, 56 points in 32 games in Oshawa), of Michael Misa (17 years old, second scorer in the Junior League of Ontario with 64 points in 33 games, and likely top 5 in 2025), or even the hope of the Canadian Michael Hage (18 years old, 20 points in 16 games in his first season in the NCAA) is even more scandalous.

A past glory?

We are allowed to be proud of our belonging to Quebec without wallowing in navel-gazing. There was a time when hockey was dominated by Mario Lemieux, Pierre Turgeon, Luc Robitaille, Vincent Damphousse and Stéphane Richer, where Patrick Roy, Martin Brodeur, Roberto Luongo and Marc-André Fleury constituted the cream of the goalies. This is no longer the case today.

Since 2019, Quebec has seen only one of its players, Alexis Lafrenière in 2020, chosen in the top 20 in the NHL draft. Slovakia, Germany and Austria had two each, all drafted in the top eight.

Only one Quebecer, Sacha Boisvert, was drafted in the first round in the last two vintages. But he left the province at 14 to enter Mount St. Charles Academy in Rhode Island. Gabriel Perreault was born in Sherbrooke, but has also been playing in the United States since his early teens and represented the Americans at the World Junior Championship.

Belarus, Norway, Switzerland and Slovakia have as many first round picks as Quebec for two years, Austria has two.

Former Avalanche, Canadiens and Blackhawks goalie Jocelyn Thibault, who made the Sherbrooke Phœnix a success, and who is one of the most accommodating human beings in the business, did not leave Hockey Quebec to Nothing.

Perhaps we should look at ourselves in the mirror, and not hold the rest of the country responsible for our incompetence. Or cry wolf when Canada fails.

Quebec has won four of the last five Memorial Cups? The QMJHL won four, rather: Rouyn-Noranda and Quebec, but also Saint John and Acadie-Bathurst… in New Brunswick.

Without taking anything away from these winners, the Memorial Cup is a strange beast. The team with the best talent and experience will win, but a victory is no guarantee of development. Only two players from the Remparts and the Huskies, winners of this famous Cup, in 2023 and 2019, respectively Zachary Bolduc and Noah Dobson, a defenseman from Prince Edward Island, are regulars in the NHL.

And in the big league?

Among professionals, the best Quebec counter in the National League, Jonathan Huberdeau, comes to 72^e rank. He is 31 years old. The best scorer among those under 25, Alexis Lafrenière, is 168^ewith 21 points in 37 games.

The best scorer among defensemen, Mike Matheson, is 33^e. He will soon be 31 years old. The best scorer in this position among the under-25s, Maveric Lamoureux, is at… 203^e rank, with three points in 15 games. There is only one number one goalie from Quebec in the NHL, Samuel Montembeault, of the Canadiens.

At least the National Hockey League has four head coaches, Martin St-Louis, André Tourigny, Patrick Roy and Jim Montgomery. There are also four general managers, Kent Hughes, Daniel Brière, Julien BriseBois and Stan Bowman.

As they say in good Quebecois: let’s stop complaining and let’s get our heads out of the sand, bonyenne!