Katherine Henderson shares in the disappointment. The Hockey Canada president and CEO adds the national sport organization will do what’s necessary to avoid a repeat.
The country was bounced from the world junior hockey championship in Ottawa at the quarterfinal stage for the second time in 12 months earlier this week — an ugly first for the program.
Henderson and fellow executives held a news conference Saturday ahead of a pair of semifinal games the tournament hosts will watch from the sidelines.
“Canadians do expect to see our country play for a medal each and every year, and we all take that expectation very seriously,” Henderson said in her prepared opening remarks.
“There will be time for reflection and discussion on next steps for our program.”
Senior vice-president of high performance and hockey operations Scott Salmond was situated two seats down from Henderson in what amounted to a public vote of confidence despite Canada’s back-to-back losses to Czechia in the quarters, including Thursday’s 4-3 loss on home soil.
Canada captain Brayden Yager (11) stands on the blueline with teammates after losing 4-3 to Czechia in the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship quarterfinal, in Ottawa, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025.
Adrian Wyld/ The Canadian Press
“I will be sitting down with Scott,” Henderson, who pointed to success at other levels, said when asked what she’s seen from the men’s under-20 team the last two years. “We are going to talk about how we strengthen our programs for this particular tournament that we know is very, very important to Canadians.
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“I know (Salmond) will work tirelessly to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”
What happened was a team that fell far below expectations. Canada assembled a roster that left a boatload of offensive talent at home in favour of what was viewed by management as a more well-rounded roster.
The results were disastrous.
The Canadians started strong with a 4-0 victory over Finland on Boxing Day before a shock 3-2 shootout defeat to Latvia, an unconvincing 3-0 victory over Germany and a 4-1 loss to the United States on New Year’s Eve. That pushed them into the quarterfinals against Czechia instead of a lesser opponent.
A lack of offence — 13 goals in five games — and an undisciplined parade to the penalty box was Canada’s ultimate undoing.
“I understand anger, I understand disappointment, and I share it,” Salmond said. “I apologize. There should be full buildings in the next two days full of Canadians, cheering on a Canadian team. That’s our job. I apologize for that.
“We will make changes and we will be better.”
Salmond was asked later what that might entail.
“We’ll look at our selection process,” he added. “We’ll look at how we build teams. We’ve done that in the past. We’ve had a model historically where we built teams based on some sort of a ghost roster where we had skilled players, we had checking players, we had players that brought energy.”
Salmond then repeated “skill” in terms of the roster after Canada clearly focused on a wider range of factors and attributes with this failed iteration.
“We’ll be criticized and probably should be criticized about how this team was constructed,” he added.
Salmond said the contract of Peter Anholt, who led the under-20 brain trust at the last two tournaments and is also general manager of the Western Hockey League’s Lethbridge Hurricanes, is set to expire, while head scout Al Murray has one year left on his deal.
“We’ll go back and look at decisions,” Salmond said. “We’ll look at overall the way in which we build our teams.”
He added the performance review includes independent analysis, player interviews and a deep dive on analytics.
“We need to look at the process, not just the result,” Salmond said. “We need to make changes to that to improve. We do that win or lose, but we’ll spend a little more time and dig a little deeper into what that looks like this year so that we’re better prepared next year.”
ATHLETE COMMITTEE
Hockey Canada announced eight current and former players have been elected by their peers to form its new national team athlete committee.
Billy Bridges, Michael Mastrodomenico, Tyler McGregor, Bailey Mitchell, Markus Phillips, Alyssa Regalado, Kyle Turris and Kendra Woodland will each serve multi-year terms.
Hockey Canada said the committee — set to represent high-performance athletes across men’s, women’s and para — will meet quarterly at a minimum and be empowered to make recommendations on issues impacting their fellow national team athletes.
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