Like many other Canadians, Don Cherry isn’t all that thrilled with what he saw out of his home country at the World Juniors this year.
Canada won just two of five games at the tournament in Ottawa and ended up bowing out last night in a 4-3 quarterfinal loss to Czechia.
It’s the second year in a row that Canada has failed to advance to the medal rounds, falling to the same opponent at the same stage a year ago while taking on the Czechs in the quarterfinal in Sweden.
But while many people are pointing figures all over following the loss, Cherry offered a suggestion for Hockey Canada’s brass moving forward.
“Don’t be too hard on the kids. They tried their best. They seemed tight all tournament. Hockey Canada has to get with it and hire full-time coaches for the World Jrs, Under 18, Under 17 and get some consistency,” Cherry wrote in a post on X.
Dave Cameron was in his third go-around as the World Juniors head coach, winning a medal in his previous two tries in 2011 and 2022 and picking up silver and gold medals, respectively. But this year’s tournament was a different story, with Cameron being the target of much criticism following this year’s early exit.
In Canada, World Juniors coaches are typically named well in advance and almost always plucked from the ranks of the Canadian Hockey League. Cameron himself has been the head coach of the Ottawa 67’s since 2021, having also coached the Ottawa Senators from 2011-2016 while being a Calgary Flames assistant from 2016-2018.
The 90-year-old Cherry has been off the air from CBC and Sportsnet since November 2019, following his comments about a perceived lack of immigrants wearing poppies around Remembrance Day, comments he has since doubled down to on multiple occasions.
Given his history of unabashed nationalism, Cherry’s suggestion that something is practiced in many places other than Canada may seem ironic.
The idea of full-time coaches for the national junior program would be unprecedented in Canada, but it is not totally foreign worldwide or in other sports.
And outside of Canada, every single country brought back their coach from the 2024 tournament. Sweden’s Tomas Montén is the longest-serving active World Juniors head coach, having been to 10 tournaments in a row.
Germany’s Tobias Abstreiter has done the last six, Antti Pennanen has coached Finland four years in a row, Latvia’s Artis Abols and Slovakia’s Ivan Fenes have done three in a row, while Switzerland’s Marcel Jenni and USA’s David Carle have done two. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan’s Sergei Starygin has been the head coach of seven teams at either the top-flight or Division-1A at the World Juniors, though they haven’t all been in consecutive years.
Making Cherry’s vision a reality might not be the top priority for Hockey Canada, but it could help them be a bit more like the other countries they’ve been unable to advance past for the last two tournaments.
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