Latvia Loss Reminds That World Juniors No Longer Canadian Walkover

It’s a Xmas holiday thing. With nothing better to do over the extended break Canadians watch the World Junior Hockey Championships. Little things get big very quickly. So it’s probably a good idea to put team Canada’s 3-2 SO loss to Latvia into some perspective.

After beating plucky Latvia 10-0 in a game last year, the highly rated Canadians allowed Latvia to tie this game late in the third period. Then, after a scoreless overtime session, Latvia scored the only goal of the shootout on their eighth try at Canada’s goalie, 17-year old Jack Ivankovic.

Meanwhile, Linards Feldbergs stopped 55 shots over 65 minutes before adding eight more in the shootout. For Latvia it’s the pinnacle of their hockey year. For Canada it will be quickly forgotten if they pull things back together to make the final.

But for Canadian fans on holiday, unsettled by Donald Trump jibes about making them the 51st state, the loss portends something deeper and darker. Canada has owned the tournament for much of its being, winning five golds in the past decade. But now the U.S. is suddenly king-in-waiting, winners three times in that decade, including last year. They seem a lock to win again this year (despite losing to Finland).

Meanwhile some pundits are calling this edition of Team Canada its weakest in years. Realists point out that, were it not for playing in the NHL, Canada could still have Connor Bedard, Macklin Celebrini and Carter Yaremchuck, among others, in their lineup. And yes, the quality of all the nations in the tournament has risen. This is no longer shooting fish in the barrel.

And here there might be some traction for the argument that with all its hockey advantages, Canada is not developing its elite talent properly. Generally the U.S. (or that small portion of the country that likes hockey) has adopted a hothouse strategy, concentrating its best players in exclusive development silos.

That’s the typical European soccer model, too. Elite prospects as young as 14 are brought into development programs run by top-tier teams. Canada, meanwhile, spreads its elite players over 60-plus CHL teams, second-tier junior and the NCAA. Best-on-best occurs at tournaments, but most players are trained for the unique rigours of team play and travel at the NHL level. For all the spaghetti thrown at the wall too much doesn’t stick. Or so goes the theory.

But there’s also the new reality. As we wrote upon the death of Walter Gretzky in March of 2021, “The days of amiable Ab Howe, father of Gordie, smiling benignly as his son taught himself the game are over.” Walter taught Canada how to train seriously for the Soviets. Inadvertently, he created an expensive, elite training model favouring those with true cash to train prodigies.

“As a pioneer of more sophisticated training, Walter adapted a number of the practises used by the USSR team under Anatoli Tarasov in the 1960s, drills and strategies that stood Canadian conventional thinking on its head. As I wrote in my 1998 book “Of Ice And Men”, Gretzky was unsurprised when the 1972 Soviet team swamped Canada in the early going of their Super Series.

“People said, wow, this is incredible,” Wayne Gretzky remarked later. “Not to me it wasn’t. I’d been doing this drills since I was three years old. My dad was very smart.” Among the many innovations in his Brantford backyard rink were playing Wayne on defence as a tyke so he could learn to see the entire ice and how plays developed. It also increased Wayne’s peripheral vision.

There were many more drills and insights, as Walter’s many tributes have described. Wayne has always bridled when people attributed his success simply to instinct. He always said he trained for his craft in the same way a doctor or scientist might train. “I’ve put in almost as much time studying hockey as a medical student puts in studying medicine.” That training was often under Walter.”

Their success started a quest for the best techniques. “Power skating, off-ice training, ice rentals, new equipment, travel and coaching all became necessary to get a leg up on the competition. It was also very expensive. Having the resources to send your child to the top fitness gurus like Gary Roberts or to place them in a school like Shattuck St. Marys (as Sidney Crosby was) becomes a process costing tens— or hundreds— of thousands of dollars.

“Where the NHL was predominantly players from blue-collar backgrounds till the Euros arrived in the 1970s, today it is often constituted of young men from families of means and education. The idea of the farming father of the six Sutter brothers affording his sons’ training today is highly improbable. Today’s NHL has a number of college-educated players and products of dedicated European training.

“In that way, through no fault of Walter Gretzky, hockey has become a sport for families of means or friends with means. He taught parents that the proper training and equipment was imperative. And that doesn’t mean simply the rink in your backyard. With a new pair of skates costs $500, a stick costs $125 or a set of goalie equipment runs into a few thousand dollars you are losing a segment of the population to financial costs. And so Walter’s legacy of training development if forever tied to a big price tag.”

Players in other nations observed the same, too, and soon were applying intensive training methods from soccer and other sports. No wonder Canada is no longer gets walk-overs from the midrange nations.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

With Carney On Horizon This Is No Time For Poilievre To Soften His Message

Published on February 20, 2025

Bruce Dowbiggin

Canada awaits the outcome of Canada/ USA Hockey Armageddon II it’s fair to assess just how much a single hockey game has sharpened the focus on the political line brawl between the the nations. The proxies on skates have revealed a few truths about contemporary Canada.

While the Liberal party has suspended reality so that it can pretty-up Mark Carney, Canada’s media instead fawns over conflicting polls showing a Kamala Harris-like ascension of Carney to contender status. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s Canadian rhetoric gets more belligerent as his 30-day tariff reprieve runs out. Finally, Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary has advised Trump to delay the tariff Apocalypse till Canada can get an election done.

The common denominator in all this is Conservative leader Pierre Polievre. Or, at least, the mystery of Pierre Poliievre. There are several Poilievres in circulation. There is the Liberal/ NDP version of a nasty wolverine who savages innocent reporters and talks down his nose to opponents.; Next, there is the sunset media’s version of an untested slogan-reciting automaton.

And finally there is the Paul Ryan nerd clone who thrives on explaining kitchen-table economics to people awash in debt and despairing of ever getting ahead in DEI land. Which is the real deal? And does Poilievre himself know who he is anymore?

This distinction is important because, barring a charisma implant for Mark Carney, Poilievre will be the next prime minister, likely with a healthy majority. Neither of the first two Poilievre constructs will disappear soon, of course. The comms teams on the Left are determined to ride over Poilievre, however bad the polls. You need only look at the how the vanquished Left in the U.S. still acts as if they, not Trump, won a mandate last November to understand that Liberals are loath to accept any public rebuke.

The best place to answer the question of who is PP does not come from his apple-eating defenestration of the hapless reporter in B.C. While the MAGA right worshipped that moment and other slap-downs of the press— and the Left demonized him for it— it seems that the Poliievre being groomed by his advisors is meant to be softer and more statesmanlike.

His Saturday rally in Ottawa, shortly before the Canada/ USA hockey brawl, was a good place to start. In the face of Trump’s imminent tariff threat gone was the pitiless street fighter and in came the statesman, full of talk about the glories of Canada and why America needs us.

He seemed intent on tying up the Boomer vote with this speech. Oh wait. Boomers still love Liberals and Carney. Why is Poilievre going after that unwinnable demographic? Isn’t that the quicksand every Conservative, save Steven Harper, has floundered in? But there was Poilievre wandering into Liberal Speak, trying to list the benefits of the nation’s past.

Real Canadians– eg those not voting for Carney– know what a great place it can be. They don’t need to be given a Tourism Canada commercial. And as we wrote last week younger Canadians need a reason to reject Trump’s offer of citizenship. Poilievre needed to level with Canadians about what happened the past decade on defence, crime, DEI. He needed to be frank about money laundering, fentanyl production and the penetration of China’s Communists into the fabric of the land.

While his handlers seemingly urged him to go statesman, Canadians were willing to hear the truth, not another Carney eye glazer. He needed to channel Harry “Give ‘Em Hell” Truman (“I tell my opponents the truth and it feels like hell.” ) He needed to say he’ll be pitiless in his treatment of those (media, PSA) who stand in the way of a bright new day. As so often happens it was CPC playing on Liberals turf instead of staking out their own. Canada already has Doug Ford, they’re saying. We don’t need another mushy Tory.

Poilievre concluded with a Churchill barb about how America will always do the right thing— after they’ve exhausted the other possibilities. It was an unnecessary and provocative one liner from a guy who’s try to establish his bonafides as the capable negotiator for Canada O’Leary is promising he’ll be. Did he and his brain trust think the thin-skinned Trump would simply slough off the jibe?

It is performances like these that leave Canadians wondering if they’re voting for Poilievre or simply voting against Trudeau and the thoroughly corrupt Liberal/ NDP coalition. Wobbly performances like this will lead to vote leakage to Liberals and to Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada. Bernier has urged a realistic assessment of Canada’s precarious position vis a vis the USA.

Instead of perpetuating the shopworn homilies to 1970s Canada that have expired, Bernier suggests looking at the opportunities of closer economic— not cultural— cooperation with the Americans. Let Liberal/ NDP moan about collaboration. They’re like the three little pigs expecting their houses of straw and twigs will survive the ongoing attacks of China and international money laundering.

Poilievre has to stop pretending that a heavily indebted and structurally crumbling Canada can withstand the next four years of Trump bombast. He must have an intervention with the Canadian public to bring them to the bracing reality they face. Only when they know which side is up, away from Trudeau, will they start to climb out of this mess.

Bruce Dowbiggin

Team Canada Hits American Wall. Wall Wins. Now What?

Published on February 17, 2025

Bruce Dowbiggin

You wanted a border war? You got a border war. And just like the political conflict this one came down to Canada’s defence. Or lack of same.

After weeks of a phoney war of words between Canada’s abdicated leadership and America’s newly elected Trump administration, the question of Canada’s sovereignty crystallized Saturday on a hockey rink in Montreal. It was a night few will forget. The 3-1 score of Team U.S. over Team Canada being secondary to other outcomes.

Despite public calls for mutual respect, the sustained booing of the American national anthem and the Team Canada invocation by MMA legend Georges St. Pierre was answered by the Tkachuck brothers, Matthew and Brady, with a series of fights in the first nine seconds of the game. Three fights to be exact when former Canuck J.T. Miller squared up with Brandon Hagel. (All three U.S.players have either played on or now play for Canadian NHL teams.)

Premeditated and nasty. To say nothing of the vicious mugging of Canada’s legend Sidney Crosby behind the U.S. net moments later by Charlie McEvoy.

Those who’d expected a solidarity moment pregame to counter booing the anthem had been optimistic. “Kinda think it might be more fitting for the US team to go stand shoulder to shoulder with the Canadians, under the circumstances. That, I’d cheer.,” said Andrew Coyne. Wrong again.

Expecting a guys’ weekend like the concurrent NBA All Star game, the fraternal folks instead got a Pier Six brawl. It was the most stunning beginning to a game most could remember in 50 years. (Not least of all the rabid Canadian fanbase urging patriotism in the home of Quebec separation) Considering this Four Nations event was the NHL’s idea to replace the tame midseason All Star Game where players apologize for bumping into each other during a casual skate, the tumult as referees tried to start the game was shocking.

But in unprecedented times who could have predicted the outcome? Under-siege Canadians were represented by fans wearing flashing red lights. They’d been urged on by yahoos in the Canadian media to boo everything American they saw, unaware but uncaring if it ruled out Americans playing in a Canadian city when they get the chance.

“It’s also more political than the (1972) Summit Series was,” bawled Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur, “because Canada’s existence wasn’t on the line then, and it may be now. You’re damn right Canadians should boo the anthem.”

He got what he asked for. It was as if large segments of Canada had suddenly awoken to their fate in the weeks since incoming POTUS Donald Trump’s tariff threats forced PM Justin Trudeau to resign and prorogue Parliament so his Liberals could stage a succession plan. Or maybe, according to Liberal house leader Karin Gould, postpone the election.

Instead of looking inward to examine what Canada had done to invite trouble the target was instead on Trump, who many believe is supposed to act like a beneficent older brother to Canada. Indignant Canadians are suddenly cancelling winter vacations to the U.S. while boycotting American chain stores like Home Depot and Costco. Even though Canada’s military is a token force following years of Trudeau downsizing and DEI incursions, the sunset media invokes Vimy Ridge and D-Day in their disgust with Trump, who wants Canada (and NATO allies) to actually pay for their defence.

Earlier in the day, presumptive PM Pierre Poilievre echoed the Liberal line with a rally for Canadian unity that would have worked in 1995, not 2025. In a move he may regret he quoted Churchill’s barb that Americans will always do the right thing after every other option has been exhausted. It drew cheap laughs. With luck, Trump’s animus to Trudeau will overshadow this potshot in a critical moment. Or maybe not.

The TV commercials from Canada’s corporate side waved the patriot flag, too. Leading one to wonder had they really missed the Trudeau decade that prompted this? Did they not hear him talking about Canada having no culture now? How it was now postmodern? How it was now 40 million narratives? How he’d lowered the flag for six months in penance for racism and genocide? Apparently not, as they revived narratives from the 1980 Quebec referendum to stir the crowd.

Now, with the symbolic game lost, what’s next? For Team Canada, injured and humbled, there’s an afternoon tilt Monday in Boston against Finland. Only by beating the Finns can they get a revenge game against the American, this time before a hostile Boston crowd. Should they get there would it be Hudson Bay rules again? How will Americans respond? The mind boggles.

Had there not been such a dramatic political overtone, the attention of the media might have dwelt on the fact that this was the first Canada/ U.S. best-on-best contest in 12 years. Excluding the fights it was a monumental display of skill, stamina and, sadly for Canada, goaltending. Why the wait? NHL commissioner Gary Bettman always puts the league’s interests ahead of those who want to see the best players against each other. So expansion and outdoor games took precedence.

Ordinarily the smashing success of the tournament would shame the NHL into more such competitions. And indeed they are conceding to a schedule of Olympics (Italy in 2026) and World Cups in the next decade. As thrilling as any of those contests might be they will likely pale next to Saturday’s drama. In fact, only Game Eight of the 1972 Summit Series can match the explosive political and sports combination of Feb. 16, 2025.

Guesses are now being accepted over just what Canada and Canada’s hockey team’s program might look like by the end of the 2020’s. Once certainty— if the game Saturday is any indication fraternal friendship between the U.S. and Canada will be on hold for a while.