The World Juniors are in full swing in our nation’s capital and there has been no shortage of surprises.
There was no bigger surprise than the Latvians, who won two games in the tournament for the first time ever. Unfortunately for the host, one of those wins came in a dramatic 3-2 overtime win against the Canadians, despite a 50-shot effort. Now, heading into a New Year’s Eve battle against the Americans, Canada needs a win to guarantee first place otherwise they could finish in third, depending on other results.
The Edmonton Oilers don’t have many top prospects but this end-of-year clash should spark interest from prospect junkies. Beau Akey and Paul Fischer are representing the countries in action tonight, however neither have seen much ice time throughout the competition this far.
Akey has dressed in every game for Canada and saw the ice the most in Canada’s loss to Latvia. He played 15:07 that night due to Matthew Schaefer leaving the game with an upper-body injury. Other than that, he played 3:04 versus Finland and 3:01 against Germany. Mark Masters reported today that Akey skated as the seventh defenceman again at morning skate.
Steven Ellis from Daily Faceoff had this to say about Akey’s play at the World Juniors:
“Canada hasn’t shown much willingness to use Akey, who is averaging 6:40 a game. I don’t expect that to change tonight, but in a game where everyone is going to be searching for an edge, it’ll be interesting to see if Akey can impress enough to get a few more opportunities – especially late.”
Steven didn’t have much to report on Fischer, who has played in only two of the three games. The University of Notre Dame defenceman averaged only 5:34 across those two games and isn’t expected to play tonight, according to Masters.
Canada has won four straight New Year’s Eve games with the most recent coming last tournament against Germany. Canada won 6-3 that night and three other wins came against Sweden 5-1, Finland 4-1 and Czechia 7-2. However, the last time they played the United States to end the year they lost.
That defeat came back in 2017 when Toronto and Montreal hosted the event. Canada lost 3-1 with Thomas Chabot scoring the lone goal in the third period, after the US was already up 2-0. Caleb Jones was the only Oilers prospect to play in that game. The two international rivals met again in the final but Canada couldn’t get revenge. The US won 5-4 in a shootout.
Hopefully tonight Canada can rewrite the script on what has been a disappointing World Junior campaign so far.
