Arrogance cost Canada the World Junior Championship
For the second consecutive year, Team Canada was eliminated in the quarter finals at the World Junior Hockey Championship.
Head coach Dave Cameron led the 2025 group, a team who’s roster certainly turned some heads after its selection. Meanwhile, there was a ton of criticism blanketing Cameron’s tactics, due to the amount of practice time, or lack there of throughout the two-week tournament. After another year of disappointment, where does Hockey Canada go from here?
On Friday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and Frank Seravalli discussed Team Canada’s recent performance, and what exactly went wrong at the 2025 World Juniors.
Yaremchuk: Frank, let’s start with another crushing loss for Hockey Canada in the quarter finals of the World Juniors. Back-to-back years they’ve been ousted in the first game of the elimination round by Czechia. And, it was a good comeback effort yesterday, they were down 3-1, they tied up the game, but at the end of the day, the discipline issues this team had continued to plague them. There are a lot of different things to dissect with the way this Canadian team was ran during the tournament.
We can talk about Dave Cameron basically choosing not to have a practice, or a morning skate as the tournament went on. A lot of mind-boggling decisions, and I know a lot of people were talking about the officiating, and things like that, I think James Duthie put it really well last night on the TSN broadcast, which he always does, when he said – ‘the officials had a bad game, Canada had a bad tournament.’
Seravalli: Couldn’t agree more. And, it was an ugly night for the officials, I thought. The inconsistency, just on the two kneeing penalties alone was crazy. But, in the end, I think the result was fitting. I think Canada got what it deserved in terms of its play in the tournament. And, in terms of its overall approach to the tournament.
The reason why Canada is out in the quarter finals for the second year in a row, for the first time in tournament history since they expanded to a playoff/bracket style format in 1996, so 30 tournaments now, the first time Canada has gone back to back years without a medal, is truly due to arrogance.
I mean, really, the message that we got from Hockey Canada in building this team was – hey sorry, NHL GM’s who do this day in and day out, you guys don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re going to leave off top-10 picks, repeatedly from this team. Beckett Sennecke, Zayne Parekh, go down the list, even future top-10 picks such as Michael Misa. Some of the best players across the junior hockey landscape, we’re going to bypass them, because you know why, we know better than you.
And, that’s really what it comes down to. The message from Hockey Canada, arrogant as ever, we know better than you. And, I’m here to tell you, guess what, everything has changed. The whole hockey landscape has changed. The talent gap between Canada and the rest of all these other countries, and now for prove including Czechia, is extremely small…It’s the arrogance, that’s why Canada lost this tournament.
Some of it’s on the players for sure, can’t let them off the hook…There used to be this fear, going into a World Junior tournament, on Canadian soil, against the big-bad Canadians, that if they weren’t going to out skill you, were certainly going to out will you, and out hit you. That disappeared. There’s no more fear going into play Canada, and part of it, is just because that talent pool has changed, and everyone else has caught up.
For complete coverage of the World Juniors, where Canada goes from here, and the very latest from around the NHL, watch the full episode below.