As everyone knows by now, the International Ice Hockey Federation announced this afternoon that the 2022 World Junior Hockey Championship has been cancelled due to COVID-19 cases within the tournament. In this post, I’m going to take a look at how this could have been avoided.
But first while on the topic of the IIHF cancelling events due to the coronavirus pandemic, I want it to be known that I am extremely disappointed that they axed the Women’s U18 tournament for the second year in a row. It’s a shame those players, many of whom will grow to become Olympians one day, won’t get to show off their skills at one of the top tournaments in the Women’s game. Hopefully a federation such as USA Hockey or Hockey Canada steps up to host it in the spring.
As for the 2022 World Juniors, how did we get to this point where the entire tournament needed to be cancelled? First, Tuesday’s game between Switzerland and the United States was cancelled because of two positive cases for the Americans. Switzerland was then awarded 3pts for a regulation win, while the United States got 0pts and a regulation loss in the standings.
Then on Wednesday morning/early afternoon is when things started to accelerate. The Czechia/Finland game set for 2pm ET in Edmonton was cancelled due to a positive test among the Czechs and then the Russia/Slovakia game that was to be played at 4:30pm ET in Red Deer was cancelled due to a positive case among the Russian players.
Four players out of 250 testing positive led to the entire tournament being cancelled, along with five on-ice officials according to TSN’s Bob McKenzie.
I’m not going to sit here and go back and forth in regards to COVID because there are people I know on both sides of it saying the tournament should have never went ahead, or shouldn’t have been cancelled, etc. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I’ll leave it at that.
How could this have been avoided? Well, the only way they could have likely avoided a full tournament cancellation would have been by doing a bubble like they did in Edmonton last year. Which would include full isolation from the public.
The players this year had to quarantine for seven or eight days upon arrival in their host city, followed by daily testing, not being allowed to go out for meals, etc. It was essentially a hybrid bubble, but it failed.
According to Chris Peters of DailyFaceoff, there was a wedding reception at one of the hotels in Red Deer where the players were staying. Team officials said that there were interactions with the public at this hotel, something that was not supposed to happen. Now, could this have led to the possible cases among the American and Russian teams, we’ll probably never know.
But it begs the question, why are tournament organizers booking hotels that already have events such as weddings planned, when the goal is to limit the amount of contact between teams and the general public? It makes zero sense and if I were on a team that was in that hotel, I’d be extremely pissed off right now at the tournament organizers.
Ideally, for this tournament to happen, it would have needed a full bubble like I said. Four hotels (two in each city), each player, coach, staff member having their room, no sharing. A more comprehensive schedule from tournament organizers on when players can go to eat, practice, etc, like was done last year.
With all that being said, I feel awful for the players, especially the nineteen year olds, who this would probably be the highest point of their career, playing at the World Juniors, one of the best tournaments in all of sports. You also have players who may have been passed over in the NHL draft, such as Germany’s Florian Elias, who had an incredible 2021 tournament and could have used this one to springboard himself towards an NHL contract.
There’s a ton of disappointment in the hockey world right now surrounding this news and rightfully so. The last thing I want to do is to talk badly about the IIHF, Hockey Canada and the tournament organizers, because they put in hours upon hours of hard work, but this could have been avoided by going into a full bubble for the players and staff. Your goal was to have a tournament that was safe as possible, with almost no interaction with the general public, yet the opposite happened. A huge let down for all ten participating nations: Austria, Canada, Czechia, Finland, Germany, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States.
Hopefully the IIHF can find a way to reschedule the World Juniors as well as the Women’s U18 World Championship, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
Although I was only able to get three days of daily recaps in on top of my tournament preview/predictions, I’d like to thank anyone who was reading them. My articles don’t get a lot of traffic or views, but I appreciate every person who has been reading them.
Have a safe and Happy New Year.
-Cooper.