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Another day, another blowout: Is it possible to increase parity at the World Juniors?

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It’s time for some radical ideas, so let’s start with these

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rsz flags Another day, another blowout: Is it possible to increase parity at the World Juniors?

The national flags hanging at the east end of Rexall Place are ordered by the countries' respective rankings, with the powers of the hockey world - Russia, Canada, United States, Sweden - at the top of the totem pole and Latvia and Denmark (foreground) at the bottom.

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Two days in, the 2012 World Junior Hockey Championships have not brought us much in the way of surprises. Indeed, in Group B being played here in Edmonton, we’ve yet to see much in the way of competitive hockey, with two games having been decided by seven goals and the third by eight. While the magnitude of Canada’s 8-1 triumph against Finland was unexpected, the twin drubbings laid on hockey minnows Denmark by traditional powers USA and Czech Republic were not.

Such is the nature of early round play in the stratified world of international hockey, which features four true powerhouses in Canada, Russia, Sweden and USA, four intermediate programs in Finland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Switzerland, and the lightweights which literally change from year to year in the 10-team World Juniors. Since 2004, each year’s tournament has seen two teams promoted from the B Pool (a.k.a. “Division I”) to replace the two teams that got relegated out of A Pool the previous year. In this the ninth year of the format, seven of the Big Eight have played in the tournament every single year since the change, with only Switzerland lapsing out of the relegation round in 2008, regaining promotion in 2009, and returning to the main group with a bit of a splash in 2010. Otherwise the performance of the promoted teams in the preliminary round has been, in a word, pathetic. Check it out, right up to the minute:

promotedteams2004 121 Another day, another blowout: Is it possible to increase parity at the World Juniors?

Brutal. Beyond brutal. Beyond 1974-75 Washington Capitals brutal. Horrawful.

Besides the Swiss who resurfaced from their unexpected plunge into B Pool with two top five finishes in the big pond, only two other promoted teams have managed to avoid immediate demotion back to B Pool, and both of those are connected to that one Swiss miss. Kazakhstan edged out the Swiss for eighth in 2008, meaning that they returned to join two other bottom-feeders in 2009. You’ll note in the table that promotees Latvia and Germany finished 8th and 9th that year, as both managed to finish above Kazakhstan. The returning Kazakhs proved their previous year’s “strong” showing was a mirage by scoring 2 goals and allowing 46 in the preliminary round, then going +2/-23 in the relegation round against the other bottom feeders. Indeed, Germany “slipped by” Kazakhstan 9-0 in their group game, were outscored 19-3 in their three games against traditional powers, and went on to finish ninth.

That anomaly aside, the average score of the other 67 group games involving promoted teams has been 1.4 goals for to 5.8 against. Needless to say, many of these games have not been fit to watch, let alone to invest significant dollars in ticket packages as Edmonton hockey fans have done in spades. Tuesday evening’s lone game – played before 13,000 patient fans - saw the Danes fall 7-0 to the Czechs, outshot by a very convincing 44-12 margin by the squad seeded fourth in the pool for goodness sakes. It’s not going to get any prettier when Denmark plays Canada in two days’ time.

It’s not right to deny hockey minnows their chance to make their way upstream, as the Swiss and the Slovaks have done over the years. (Important note: the Slovaks were unfairly ranked as a hockey minnow after the Velvet Revolution as all of the great Chechoslovak tradition was arbitrarily credited just to the Czechs, but quickly proved their mettle by working their way up from the ignominious insult of C Pool. But in so doing they proved it could be done.)

Otherwise there has been a deadwater from ninth right on down into the teens. Germany probably lays best claim over the years to the coveted ninth spot, having bungeed from (convincing!) B pool titles in 2004-06-08-10 (and again in 2012), to re-relegation from A Pool in each of 2005-07-09-11 (and presumably ’13). This being an even-numbered year, the Germans are technically back in eleventh again, having just lapped B pool yet again, while Latvia and Denmark become the temporary whipping boys.

Danish star Nicklas Jensen spoke of the vast difference between A and B pools in this recent Cult of Hockey interview:

We have to learn just to play the simple hockey, we’re not going to play like we normally play in the B group, where we’re supposed to win and score a lot of goals. Over here we’re going to have to focus on the defensive zone and easy plays out, and just play smart and safe.

Jensen’s a fine prospect, plays on Boone Jenner’s line in Oshawa and appears to be an equal contributor. Trouble is, on the world stage Jenner has twenty-one teammates who are (roughly) as good as he is; Jensen has none. Not surprisingly, in post-game interviews last night Jensen didn’t sound too confident of Denmark’s chances against the red maple leaf, their next scheduled baptism-by-cremation.

This stratification of the international hockey world is both real and pervasive. Can anything be done to fix it? When the tried-and-true isn’t working, it’s time to get creative… 

Let’s start with a closer look at player eligibility. The World Juniors has long been considered a “19-year-olds’ tournament”, and the same rule of thumb applies just as surely in the B pool. The team with the most mature talent is apt to perform the best and earn the promotion. Alas, by the next year many of the core players will have graduated. This is true everywhere of course, but a country like Canada with over 500,000 registered hockey players there is a never-ending wellspring of talent. A hockey minnow, meanwhile, such as Denmark with fewer than 5,000 registered players, may find that stream running dry as soon as the very next year. 

Oilers prospect Kristians Pelss touched on this issue in this Cult of Hockey interview last spring, when asked about how the Latvian squad that triumphed in Belarus a year ago projected against the squad we might expect to see in Calgary now:

Actually a lot of guys are ’91 [birthdate]  and they’ll be old guys [!], so next year we’ll have a new team almost. Everybody play first time in Under-20, and it’s going to be tough. But we’ll fight, we’ll try.

Nobody doubts for a second that these poor guys are trying. But it seems they’re not just swimming upstream, they’re trying to go over Niagara Falls the hard way – against the current.

How to combat this unfortunate drain of talent? One partial solution would be to promote the winners of  the B Pool earlier in the same season, thus ensuring the teams that qualified would be the same teams that actually got to play with the big boys without huge losses to graduation. Lots to be said in favour of a play-in format. The B Pool is currently played a couple weeks ahead of the main tournament. Among other advantages, this would allow the teams relegated from last year’s A Pool a chance to requalify immediately, rather than having to wait a year in between as the Germans in particular have done time and again. Get the best of the lower-tiered teams into the main tourney every year!

As game theory the idea works just fine, but there may be budgetary concerns for the two qualifying teams that would wind up playing in back-to-back tournaments. Player releases would be a lesser issue, given that the B Pool countries have relatively few junior-aged players in higher leagues such as the CHL. A Kristians Pelss here, a Tobias Rieder there, but not a ton of guys, and in any event their release even for a pair of tournaments wouldn’t be a whole lot longer than the ones currently offered to guys heading to Hockey Canada camp.

Plunging a little deeper, I considered the WJHC’s major supplier of talent, the Canadian Hockey League. The CHL permits its member teams to have three overage players (currently ’91 birthdates). Moreover, it makes a special exception for first-year expansion teams, allowing them to carry two additional 20-year-olds, not enough to make said team actually good, but at least significantly more competitive and respectable. Somebody had their thinking cap on straight the day they came up with that wrinkle.

Let’s apply the same principle to the World Juniors. Keep the hockey powers to players aged 19 and under, but make an exception each year just for the two incoming teams, that they be allowed to dress, say, three “overage” players. Treat them like expansion teams. What a difference that would make, three mature players and team leaders for a squad that is otherwise doomed to flounder beyond its depth.  How much better would the Latvians be, or the Danes? Surely at least a couple of goals to the good, enough to make these last two nights at Rexall a little less painful, and maybe enough for the Latvians to steal a point or two down there in Cowtown.

Another option would be to allow all developing hockey nations with <X registered hockey players - including all those in Divisions I, II, and III – a specified number of 20-year-olds at what is nominally a U-20 event. That’s the speed bump here, a change of philosophy for the at-times-hidebound old guard of the IIHF, in which the hockey powers and their interests are very well represented. The incoming teams don’t appear to get much in the way of advantages now, from the minor inconvenience of the worst dressing room to the significant one of the worst schedule. Four in five nights, with both of their games against the two teams seeded immediately above them being the second of  back-to-backs against a rested opponent. That seems like piling on to me, but in the rankings-bound IIHF that seems to be how things are done. Give the newcomers a break? Hmmm, never occurred to us. Why throw them a life preserver when we’ve got all these lead weights to dispose of?

I took the opportunity to question Danish coach Todd Bjorkstrand on the matter after the loss to the Czechs. While disappointed about his team’s performance on the night, he was realistic about the difficulties facing them. Thoughtful and well-spoken, Bjorkstrand offered a slightly different angle, choosing to focus on the group which was eligible for his team rather than the guys who weren’t. 

rsz toddbjorkstrand Another day, another blowout: Is it possible to increase parity at the World Juniors?

Danish coach Todd Bjorkstrand. (Photobomber: Jonathan Willis)

Obviously if a majority of players were ’92, physically that’s going to be an advantage, that’s what you want. But that’s one of the challenges when you’re coaching a team in Denmark, we don’t have the numbers, and we don’t have that many players to pick from. That’s the way it is. Not much we can do about it. Denmark just has to do a better job of developing more players and having better players.   

Looking over the rosters, I note Denmark currently has just nine players with 1992 birthdates. Tuesday night’s opponents, the Czechs, feature fifteen such players, and it showed. In that vein it’s worth noting Canada also has fifteen ’92s, the Americans an imposing nineteen. Moreover, the Danes have two of three players in the Edmonton group who were born as late as 1995 (the other is a Finn). Talent bubbles to the surface much more readily when the pool is shallow. Whereas in Canada, the most precocious  of young hockeyists simply have to wait their turn.

Give the Danes and their ilk a handful of 20-year-olds, however, and their disadvantage in that important department is vastly diminished. Given the unhealthy number of blowouts that bloom perennially under the status quo, it’s high time that the powers-that-be at least consider some outside-the-box methods to level the ice surface. Any steps in that direction would be good for the emerging teams, good for the fans, good for the game.  

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Follow Bruce on Twitter at  http://twitter.com/#!/brucemccurdy.


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