The Montreal Canadiens have had some impressive performances in recent World Junior Championships. That will almost surely continue next year when Lane Hutson suits up for the United States in the 2024 World Juniors.
That tournament will be held in Gothenburg, Sweden and Hutson will be returning for his second World Juniors after helping USA win a bronze medal in Halifax, Nova Scotia last winter.
While Hutson won a bronze it was Canadiens prospect Joshua Roy who really put on a show for Habs fans. He worked his way up to top line duty with Team Canada and played alongside phenom Connor Bedard and helped propel Canada to a gold medal victory on home soil.
We have also seen great performances in recent years from the likes of Adam Engstrom, Kaiden Guhle, Cole Caufield, Alexander Romanov, Jesse Ylonen and the list goes on. It is just a fun event to watch and get a quick snapshot of what the team’s best prospects look like against tough competition.
Canadians will have a chance to win once again at home in 2025 when the event is held in Ottawa, which was just announced yesterday. The tournament is being played in Canada essentially every other year so after being in Halifax it goes to Sweden and then back to Canada once again in 2025.
It is too early to tell which players will be playing in the tournament, though many of them will likely be drafted in the upcoming 2023 NHL Draft next week.
Selfishly, it is great when the tournament is played close to Montreal because the game times make it easier to watch. The 2024 event in Sweden will likely have games on quite early in the morning in this part of the world, while the “late games” will be played around 2:00 PM here in Canada.
With the 2025 event in the eastern time zone, it will make it easy for Canadiens fans to keep an eye on the team’s prospects at that World Juniors. Whether it is watching the games at a reasonable hour or making the short drive to the nation’s capital to check out a game in person, a World Juniors nearby is always a fun event.
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