Uh-Oh Canada!

For the second time in less than a week, the Canadian Junior hockey team staged a furious third period comeback to erase a two goal deficit against the U.S. behind the remarkable heroics of Edmonton Oiler prospect Jordan Eberle. This time, however, the U.S. squad was able to stave off the onslaught, and iced the World Junior Championship win in overtime. Full marks, and congratulations, to the U.S. on a well deserved win. They could have, and probably should have, beaten the Canadians in the final round robin game on New Year’s Eve as well.

This is the second year in a row that the Canadian team flirted with disaster at the World Juniors, always seeming to pull a rabbit out of their collective asses when they needed it most. They had a cakewalk through the tourney this year, including a 16-0 opening game annihilation of Latvia, and fortuitously drawing the Swiss as their semi-final opponent. The only team of any import that they faced was the U.S. (they dodged the Swedes, Russians and Finns), and they were arguably outplayed in both games, despite the advantage of having the partisan Canadian crowd at their backs (also for a second year running). I was obviously pulling for Canada, but our teams have been so dominant at every level in recent years that the resulting confidence was bordering on arrogance. It won’t hurt Hockey Canada to munch a little humble pie between now and the Olympics next month. In fact, it looks good on them.