Merry New Year, everybody. I hope your 2025 is a good one. It’s certainly been for the World Juniors.
The World Juniors this year is probably one of the most exciting and fun group of games that we’ve seen in quite a long time, certainly since I’ve started covering them back in 2016 for SCoC. Part of it is circumstance; Latvia turned out to take their sudden inclusion in the 2022 WJC as a major chance to both upgrade their status and be seen as not just cute underdogs, but fairly scrappy throughout their times in this tourney; Team USA has gone from skilled but flawed to mostly the team to beat in just about every aspect of the game, Finland and Sweden always find a pretty emphatic way to rebound from unimpressive performances and remain a threat, and even the relegation round is looking to be a very tight series.