No Monday Night Football on tonight? No College Football Championship until next week? Still bored with the first half of the NBA season? Not a problem at all. North of the United States (wait, there’s a country North of us!?) everyone will be glued to their television sets sets tonight at 8 pm EST for their “Granddaddy of ’em All”. Canada is set to host Russia in the World Junior Hockey Championships, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t tune in.
In case you were wondering, The World Junior Hockey Championships (taking place this year in Toronto and Montreal) are actually a real thing, not just a figment of Pierre Mcguire’s imagination. They take place every single year, making them arguably as important as March Madness here in the United States. The tournament features the best under-20 players in the world playing for country, not club. The players are protecting their bodies with full on face-masks and neck-guards, so nobody has to worry about those nasty spinal injuries or concussions. And the USA is actually good and won the tournament two years ago! So why aren’t we watching?
The Short answer: All games south of Canada have been relegated to the NHL Network. For Comcast customers such as myself, the Network comes with the “Premium Sports Package” and is quite difficult for the uninhabited to even find on the channel guide because it is in a different channel range than the other sports channels (did that last sentence make sense to anyone but myself? Nice.) If it wasn’t for me subscribing to “The Score” App on my iPhone (as opposed to ESPN’s version, ‘SportsCenter’) I might not have even known that the tournament existed. Even worse, the Network couldn’t even splurge to get the likes of Doc Emerick and the aforementioned Pierre McGuire on the the mic. Unacceptable.
The Long Answer: Americans simply have too much on our mind to worry about amateur hockey. What with the New Year, the impending football playoffs (at both levels), and various other reasons (only 1-2 more weeks before the Patriots are booted from the playoffs and everyone in Boston realizes that there are 2+ more winter months to go…gotta try and stay happy while you can!), we have a lot of business to attend to. A sport long dominated by Canadians might not seem worthy of our American eyes, especially when the US team was beaten by Russia in the quarterfinals.
All I can say on the matter is that tonight’s face off will absolutely be worth watching. Canada and Russia boast two of the best teams in the world (under-20 or over-20) and it will be extremely exciting to see them play for a gold medal with 20,000 screaming Canadians expecting a victory and nothing less. Tonight marks the 14th time that Canada and Russia have played for the title. Every year, bars in Canada are packed in anticipation for this tournament (I have no basis for this information other than hearing Zach Lowe say so on one of his pod casts). The world will be watching as some of these youngsters (many of them currently employed by NHL teams) try to make a name for themselves for the first time.
Do yourselves a favor and tune in tonight, even if it takes 20 minutes to find the channel the game is airing on.
Diamond Bags 
