Salvian: There is no world juniors for women. What would it take to make it happen?

The best under-20 men’s players from the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden and the United States will compete for a spot in the gold medal match during the semi-finals of the 2024 World Junior Championship on Thursday.

The best women in that age group don’t get a chance. They never did that.

Since 1977, the IIHF has sanctioned a junior men’s world. The best female hockey players in the world participate in the annual national under-18 and senior championships, tournaments that have begun year after their male counterparts. And while women’s soccer is growing rapidly – ​​look no further than a multi-million dollar investment in the professional game with the PWHL – there is still no women’s world junior.

That’s something Team Canada and Team USA general managers Gina Kingsbury and Katie Million want to change.

“The U20 group is the missing piece,” Million said in an interview with The Athletics. “It has been (our) dream to make this come true.”

There have been discussions with the IIHF over the past year about a potential women’s world juniors, Million said, but recent committee meetings have largely voted down the idea because other countries outside the U.S. and Canada are not ready to add another team. their women’s program.

It is true that Canada and the US have dominated at the under-18 level, just as their senior teams have; no other country has won an U18 gold medal since the tournament’s inception in 2008. But there is noticeable growth. Last year, Sweden defeated Team USA in the semifinals to win a second silver medal after making it to the gold medal game for the first time in 2018. And it was Nela Lopušanová, a 14-year-old from Slovakia, who was the star of the 2023 tournament.

Lopušanová is perhaps the most obvious example of growth in international women’s hockey. If the IIHF had decided all those years ago that women’s hockey wasn’t ready for an U18 tournament, Lopušanová probably wouldn’t have become one of the most exciting young players to watch right now.

“We have to start somewhere,” Million said.

The main criticism at all levels of international women’s hockey is usually that Canada and the US are going to win it all, so what’s the point? It’s an old argument.

Because what is also true is that two countries have dominated the men’s junior world in its almost 50-year history. Canada and Russia, or previously the teams from the Soviet Union and the CIS, have won 33 of the 47 gold medals since the tournament officially began. Canada has won almost half of the possible championships with twenty and only missed the podium thirteen times. Only six teams have ever won more than fifty years of competition.

Since 2013, only Canada (5), Finland (3) and the US (3) have won gold.

If you’re okay with two or three teams dominating a men’s tournament, why is it a problem when it happens in women’s?

Team Canada has been dominant among the world’s juniors – despite their early exit from this year’s tournament – ​​and this has become intertwined with national pride and made hockey “Canada’s Game”. Why do we celebrate this and then use the dominance of Canadian women as a reason not to play?

It is entirely possible, even with two teams at the top, to increase interest in a niche product. That was the situation in the men’s world juniors before TSN bought the rights in 1991. Now it’s must-see television, especially in Canada because of the team’s dominance and TSN’s investment.

“It’s a spectacle here in Canada,” said Canadian Olympian Sarah Nurse. “And I think this speaks to TSN, the media and how they were able to fit a tournament into this Canadian tradition. I think we can do the same with women’s events.”

With the right partners, and money of course.

But beyond that, a junior women’s world would be vital to the overall health of women’s hockey and provide a crucial – and missing – opportunity for development.

For the most part, female hockey players under the age of 18 or -19 are well served. There are club team championships and U18 nationals in Canada. USA Hockey has national championships for 19U girls. And of course there are the IIHF Under 18 World Championships.

Very few players in North America can jump from U18 players or high school hockey straight to the women’s national team. Marie-Philip Poulin, who moved from the U18 world to the senior world in 2008-2009, is one of the few to have done this. – creating a large gap in opportunities for the sport’s top players. Team USA and Canada have played an under-22 series (now called the collegiate series) since 1999, but that is usually just three games played in August.

“Those kids who are on a U18 team, we don’t see them again until they’re juniors, seniors in college or post-graduation,” Million explained. “It only helps our development of those players if they have that point of contact when they’re younger and keep them in our culture and our systems.”

An under-20 team would expose the game’s decision-makers to a potentially different group of players at a crucial point in their careers, or provide more avenues for the development of under-18 stars. Players are different at 19 than they are at 17 — some are starting, some might go the other way — but there’s no perfect way for national teams to track that progress other than by scouting college teams.

“There’s almost a forgotten group of players,” Nurse said. “You see girls who are 16, 17, 18 years old and you send them to college. And they have to hope that our GM or scouts are at games at the right times and talking to the right people.

Take Claire Thompson as a recent example. The Canadian defender was not part of the under-18 national team before heading to Princeton in 2016 and was only spotted by Team Canada scouts sent to watch her teammate Sarah Fillier. Thompson was quickly invited to the under-22 team and went on to set a 2022 Olympics record for points by a defender.

“Imagine a player like that slipping through the cracks,” Nurse said.

It would also provide the opportunity for players who are too old for U18 and just now outside the senior team to continue playing important matches.

At the age of 19, Laila Edwards has already made history as the first black woman to play for Team USA and is expected to become one of the faces of the game in due time. She should be fully in the mix to make the 2024 World Cup roster, but if she’s not quite ready yet, she won’t get any national team opportunities until USA Hockey’s annual training camp in August. And then she would not play in the international competition until the 2025 World Cup, if she made it to that selection.

Of course, someone like Edwards can continue to develop in college, but it would only benefit her development if she participated in competitive international competitions.

Player development is also not just about Team Canada and Team USA anymore. Not now that the very first PWHL season is officially starting. Men’s World Juniors not only offers one of the most prestigious stages for young hockey players, but also an opportunity to significantly increase their draft stock heading into the NHL Draft.

Let’s take another look at TSN. The network promotes the World Juniors as an opportunity to watch the future legends of the game before they become legends. A promo for the 2023 world juniors said: “Before they were household names, they were here on TSN.”

Women’s hockey players should be given the same opportunity to not only grow as players, but to make themselves known on a big stage. Fans also deserve to know who to watch or hope their favorite team lands in the first round of the PWHL Draft.

So what’s next? And what could this look like?

Initially, it could be as simple as Canada and the US expanding their roster of national teams. Every summer, Canada’s U18 and Collegiate teams compete in a mini-series. Maybe they can add an under-20 rivalry series – the next generation – to the mix.

Or perhaps, instead of a 10-team tournament like the junior men’s, it’s a smaller number of teams like a Four Nations tournament, but for the under-20s age group. Maybe it’s a World Cup-style tournament with teams from Canada, the United States and Europe. The latter option would allow top players – such as Lopušanová – from countries that may not have enough U20 players for a full squad to be in the mix.

What a junior offering for women might look like remains to be seen. The timing is even harder to predict.

However, hopefully these decisions will be made soon. Because every year that passes is another missed opportunity to grow the game.

(Photo: Dennis Pajot / Getty Images)