Defending champion Canada’s games in the 2019 IIHF world junior hockey championship will be played in Vancouver. But the foundation will be laid in Victoria.
Sixteen-season NHLer Tim Hunter, appointed Tuesday as the head coach of the host team, noted the importance of the pre-tournament selection and training camp in Victoria before the Canadian team heads across the strait to headline Group A at Rogers Arena.
The final Canadian selection camp will take place at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre in mid-December, including two games against a U Sports all-star team. That will be followed by training camp on Blanshard and two exhibition games against Group B teams, the latter which will be based in Victoria.
“[Victoria] is really the first step in the process,” Hunter said in a teleconference interview with national sports media.
“That is where our team identity will be forged and where we will get the mindset on the way we want to play. There will be lots of time [on the Island] to get that in place and get the process and ball rolling in that direction.”
International play is different than club play and that will be drilled into the Canadian players during the pre-tournament training camp on the Island.
“You have to create a team. On a national team, players’ roles will be different than on their club teams,” said Hunter, head coach of the defending Western Hockey League Scotty Munro Trophy regular-season champion Moose Jaw Warriors.
“It’s important that [lesson] comes early in the process.”
Even among the small club of ice hockey-playing nations, only Canada places such importance on the world juniors. That means there will be an extraordinary amount of national sporting interest in the Canadian team, beginning with the selection and training camps on the Island.
Hunter was assistant coach with Canada’s silver-medallist team at the 2017 world juniors in Toronto and Montreal and with the gold-medallist 2018 Canadian team in Buffalo, New York.
Named as Canadian assistant coaches were Marc-André Dumont of the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, Jim Hulton of the Charlottetown Islanders of the QMJHL and Brent Kisio of the Lethbridge Hurricanes of the WHL.
Khore Elliott of the Victoria Royals and Mike Burnstein of the Vancouver Giants were named as the athletic therapists for Canada.
Along with Canada in Group A in Vancouver will be Denmark, Russia, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. The perhaps tougher Group B at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre will consist of Finland, Sweden, Slovakia, Kazakhstan and the U.S.
The 2019 world juniors open on Boxing Day.
