The Shap Shots quick viewer guide to the 2024 World Junior Championship

Happy Hockey Holidays from all of us at Shap Shots.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

No, not the holidays, although those are nice. The World Junior Championship starts on Tuesday in Sweden, and with it being played Europe those of us in North America have a nice slate of hockey throughout the day while we wait to return to work in 2024.

Consider how you could spend your Wednesday… WJC games start at 6 am ET and continue until around 4 pm ET. You get a nice break to catch up with some friends or family, get a nice dinner, and the there are 14 NHL games that evening.

The full schedule is here.

Because the NHL has avoided best-on-best international hockey, the WJC also feels like the closest thing we get to “best-on-best” hockey with payers representing their countries, even if it means a lot more to some countries (eh, Canada) than others.

And it’s also a time we all become prospect experts. All of us.

What better time to evaluate the future of an entire organization based off one player’s performance in a short tournament?

If you want full deep dives on each team, I would suggest a subscription to the fine folks at EP Rinkside, who have spilled thousands and thousands of words on the tournament already.

For Shap Shots, for the readers, this is meant to be quick snapshot that gets you started, and most importantly, goes over how you can actually watch the games.