With the final slate of action on New Year’s Eve bringing the preliminary round to a close, things are ready to really pick up in this year’s World Junior Championship.
The knockout (or medal) round begins later this morning, and it’s been a wild tournament for the regular old neutral observers, but also a particularly interesting one for Flyers fans. Though the number of prospects taking part in the tournament has dwindled — Swedish forward Jack Berglund took an injury in the final game of pre-tournament action and was ruled out, and then Canadian goaltender Carson Bjarnason, despite making the roster out of their selection camp, was never actually registered for the tournament, so he’s played no game and is more or less sitting in limbo — they’ve been represented well by the trio of prospects still kicking around.
Heikki Ruohonen has settled in nicely on a Finnish team that’s been clicking well through the Group Stage, finishing second in their group, while both Jett Luchanko and Oliver Bonk have had their moments of stepping up big for a Canadian team that’s struggled a bit in this tournament (they fell into the three spot in the same group). But, as they say, everything resets this afternoon, and this is when the games really begin to matter.
Finland will kick off the medal round this evening — for those interested, the full schedule can be found here — with their quarterfinal matchup against Slokakia at 5:00 PM Eastern, and then Canada will follow that up with their game against Czechia at 7:30. If either or both of them advance to the semi-final, those two games will be played on Saturday January 4 at 3:30 and 7:30. If either loses in that semi-final matchup, they’ll then compete for the bronze medal on Sunday the 5th at 3:30, but if they win, they’ll go for the gold medal in the final matchup at 7:30.
Got all that? There’s a lot going on and coming at us quickly, but that’s the fun of this tournament. We’ll see how these teams fare, and if anyone in this trio of prospects has another gear left to find, a hero role to step into.
