World Juniors preview

The hockey world junior championships start today. Funnily enough, Finland has managed to win once, in 1998. Mika Noronen stopped the Russians in the gold medal game, and Niklas Hagman's overtime goal gave Finland their only gold medal to date. The tournament all-star team included goaltender David Aebischer, defenseman Andrei Markov and Finnish forwards Eero Somervuori and Olli Jokinen.

The tournament, which is watched only in Canada, has been won by Canada 15 out of 37 times it has been held, including five years in a row from 2005 to 2009. Over the last eighteen years, they've finished without a medal only once. Every year, including this one, the Canadian hockey media makes a big deal about how Canada are going into the tournament as "underdogs", and nobody ever expects them to win. I mean, it would be ridiculous if one of the two countries that has totally dominated the tournament every time it has been held would be a favorite going in, wouldn't it?

Indeed, this year Canada are expected to finish a shocking 297th out of ten participating countries. Even though there are only 193 sovereign states in the world, it is widely thought that Canada's performance will be so poor that a hundred notional states will be invented and inserted into the hockey world ranking to fully express how badly Canada will do. Reports from Hockey Canada indicate that they don't expect any of the selected players to turn up, as the team was selected by randomly picking names from the Toronto area phonebook. The players thus selected were not informed.

Despite having more hockey players, both per capita and absolutely, than any other nation in the world, and being the only country that even notices the world junior tournament is on, the Canadian media are confident that this year will turn into another unmitigated debacle for the Canadian junior team. Prospects are so bleak that it will be an incredible upset if the team doesn't play so badly that every Canadian commits suicide out of shame at the end of the first period of play.

This year, like every year, Team Canada is expected to totally disgrace the nation at a tournament which they have so far dominated every past year. Despite having finished with a medal in seventeen out of the last eighteen tournaments, an eighteenth medal is considered highly unlikely and would be incredible, astounding proof of the ability of good Canadian boys to triumph against the terrible evil of foreigners, because they're underdogs. This seeming discrepancy is not one, because we don't say it is. When asked for comment, a Canadian hockey expert screamed about Lord Jesus Baby and talked about the troops.