Katherine Henderson shares her disappointment. THE Hockey Canada The president and CEO adds that the national sports organization will do what is necessary to prevent this from happening again.
The country has been rebounded from world junior hockey championship in Ottawa in the quarterfinals for the second time in 12 months earlier this week — an ugly first for the program.
Henderson and his fellow leaders held a news conference Saturday ahead of two semifinal matches that the tournament hosts will watch from the sidelines.
“Canadians expect to see our country play for a medal every year, and we all take that expectation very seriously,” Henderson said in his prepared opening remarks.
“There will be time to reflect and discuss the next steps in our program.”
Senior vice-president of high performance and hockey operations Scott Salmond was two seats behind Henderson in what amounted to a vote of public confidence despite Canada’s back-to-back losses to the Czech Republic in the quarters, including Thursday’s 4-3 loss at home. ground.
Canada captain Brayden Yager (11) stands on the blue line with his teammates after losing 4-3 to the Czech Republic in the quarterfinals of the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship in Ottawa on Thursday, January 2 2025.
Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
“I’m going to sit down with Scott,” said Henderson, who pointed to her successes at other levels, when asked what she had seen from the men’s under-20 team over the last two years. “We’re going to talk about how we strengthen our programs for this particular tournament that we know is very, very important for Canadians.
Get the latest national news
For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up to receive breaking news alerts sent directly to you as they happen.
“I know (Salmond) will work tirelessly to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
What happened was a team that fell well short of expectations. Canada built a team that left a large amount of offensive talent at home in favor of what was seen by management as a more complete team.
The results were disastrous.
The Canadians started strong with a 4-0 win over Finland on Boxing Day before a surprise 3-2 shootout loss to Latvia, an unconvincing 3-0 win over Germany and a 4–1 loss to the United States on New Year’s Eve. This pushed them into the quarterfinals against Czechia instead of a lesser opponent.
A lack of offense – 13 goals in five games – and an undisciplined parade to the penalty box were Canada’s ultimate undoing.
“I understand the anger, I understand the disappointment and I share it,” Salmond said. “I apologize. There should be full buildings over the next two days, full of Canadians cheering on a Canadian team. That’s our job. I apologize.
“We will make changes and we will be better.”
Salmond was later asked what this might entail.
“We will review our selection process,” he added. “We will see how we build teams. We have done this in the past. Historically, we’ve had a model where we built teams based on sort of a shadow roster where we had talented players, we had control players, we had players that brought energy.
Salmond then repeated “competence” in terms of the list after Canada had clearly focused on a wider range of factors and attributes with this failed iteration.
“We will be criticized and probably should be for the way this team has been built,” he added.
Salmond said the contract of Peter Anholt, who has led the under-20 mastermind group for the past two tournaments and is also general manager of the Western Hockey League’s Lethbridge Hurricanes, is on the table. about to expire, while head scout Al Murray still has a year to play. agreement.
“We will come back and review the decisions,” Salmond said. “We will see overall how we build our teams.”
He added that performance evaluation includes independent analysis, player interviews and in-depth analysis of analytics.
“We need to look at the process, not just the outcome,” Salmond said. “We need to make changes to this to improve. We’re doing that, win or lose, but we’re going to spend a little more time and dig a little deeper into what that looks like this year so we’re better prepared next year.
ATHLETES COMMITTEE
Hockey Canada has announced that eight current and former players have been elected by their peers to form the new National Team Athletes 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 – intended to represent high-performance men’s, women’s and para athletes – will meet a minimum of once a quarter and will be empowered to make recommendations on matters impacting others. national team athletes.
© 2025 The Canadian Press