Some quick thoughts on the 2026 World Junior Championship
Sweden won gold. I was there earlier in the tournament, let's share some quick thoughts on a Monday night.
For the first time in more than a decades, Sweden finally has another World Junior Championship.
Sweden defeated Czechia 4-2 on Monday night with a pretty dominant showing, where a late dramatic Czech push with the empty net made the game feel closer than it really was for the first 57 minutes of play.
I wasn’t at the medal rounds, but I did cover the group stage of the tournament in person between Dec. 26 and 31 in Minnesota for Elite Prospects, primarily working on features and scouting.
And after watching parts of 14 games in-person and most of the rest via video, these are some thoughts and notes from the 2026 World Junior Championship while watching the game on TV Monday night.
Alberts Šmits may have laid the groundwork to steal the No. 1 draft slot. I wrote about the Latvian defender over at EP and he’s an impressive, smooth-skating physical defender that looks like he could play in the NHL tomorrow. He’s potentially going to be part of Latvia’s Olympic team, and depending on which team wins the lottery, he might end up usurping Gavin McKenna.
Speaking of McKenna, the presumptive No. 1 pick and current Penn State freshman, in my mind, still has the highest ceiling of any player in this draft class. Šmits might be the higher floor, but McKenna is going to be a bona fide difference maker for a franchise. He’s just not going to play much defense and as we saw in this tournament, there are times he seems to check out and loop waiting to cheat for offense. As someone based in Detroit, who sees Patrick Kane play a ton, McKenna gives me similar vibes.
Czech defender Tomáš Galvas was passed over in back-to-back drafts and that’s not going to happen again. Galvas comp on the TSN broadcast of the gold medal game was Lane Hutson, and I’m not sure if that’s 100 percent fair, but it’s something that NHL teams aren’t going to let slip through again.
I was at the game in person in group play where Adam Jiříček went between his legs in overtime for a game-winning goal against Finland. The St. Louis Blues 2024 first-round pick is a dynamic force against his peers, and personally I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s playing for the Blues next season, especially with teams giving younger defenders more opportunity recently.
I’m not trying to only write about defenders, but Zayne Parekh continues to be one of my favorite players to watch. I watched him in closely in person in his draft year with the Saginaw Spirit in the OHL, including watching him win the 2024 Memorial Cup, and his shot release is ridiculous. There aren’t many defenders in the NHL I can think of that have as tight of a release as Parekh where he’s able to do so much with so little space.
OK, let’s talk about attendance. It wasn’t good. In fact, it was really bad. It looked really bad for the medal round, especially after the Americans were knocked out in the quarterfinals. Games in St. Paul, in the NHL building, felt really awkward and empty, while games in Minneapolis, on the college campus, at least felt like they were in the proper sized building. The next time World Junior will be in the United States will be in 2030, for me the lessons from this will be that junior hockey tournaments — under-20 — should probably be played in rinks that typically cater to that demographic.