Who will capture gold? 2024 World Junior Championship tournament preview

It’s the holiday season, friends, and for hockey fans, the winter break is typically filled with the annual World Junior Championship tournament. Hosted this year in Gothenburg, Sweden, the event pits teams of under-20 players from 10 different countries head-to-head to determine the best national junior team on the globe!

As we prepare for things to kick off on Boxing Day – super early, the first game is at 4 a.m. MT – let’s run down the teams we’ll be seeing and how the tournament stacks up.

The two-time defending champions come in with the second-best odds to win (tied with Sweden, trailing the United States). They do have a lot of very strong offensive players, but the composition of their defensive group and goaltending could be a weakness. But they can score, and that’ll give them a decent chance to get some hardware.

Sweden’s tied with Canada for the second-best odds to win, trailing only the United States, and it’s easy to see why. They’re not quite as stacked in terms of forwards as Canada is, but their defensive group is more balanced. Aside from perhaps some minor qualms with their goaltending, the Swedes don’t have a ton of holes in their lineup.

Finland’s traditionally been a tough out at the World Juniors. Heck, they’ve won medals at this event fairly frequently (and captured gold in 2019). But this year’s group is a bit lean in terms of high-end talent, and they feel like a group that will lose a lot of close games to stronger teams like Canada and Sweden.

On one hand, Germany has never medalled at the World Juniors. On the other hand, they always seem to give one of the big-name teams a scare during the round robin. German teams usually only have a handful of NHL-drafted players on them, but they also seem to overcome that deficit through sheer feistiness.

Latvia has the longest odds to win this tournament. They likely won’t win a single game during the round robin segment. It’ll likely be a battle between them and Norway to avoid relegation.

Czechia won silver last year, their first medal since a bronze way back in 2005. They’re a tough group to get a handle on, because they have a bunch of NHL-drafted players, some high-end 2024 draft prospects, and a pretty rock-solid overall group. They’re not as flashy as Canada, the United States or Sweden, but you could reasonably expect them to be as team-oriented as Germany, except with a bit more star power (and therefore the ability to steal close games).

What can we say about the Americans? They’re good. They’re favoured to win. They have a deep team at virtually every position, and because of the prominence of USA Hockey’s development model, most of the players in this age group have played together in the past.

Slovakia is another interesting group. Slovak hockey has been on the upswing over the last few years, with many high-end NHL draft selections and a bronze medal at the recent Winter Olympics in Beijing. They last medalled at the World Juniors with a bronze back in 2015, but they could get a breakthrough this year. (Disclaimer: A “breakthrough” for them would be another bronze medal.)

Switzerland this year feels like a less-talented version of Germany. They’ll likely have a pretty consistent team and their structure and work ethic will frustrate opponents at times, but we don’t think they have the overall talent level needed to steal too many wins.

The good news is that this tournament could be a showcase for Brandsegg-Nygard, who seems poised to become the first Norwegian ever selected in the first round at an NHL Draft. The bad news is that they really need him to have a monster tournament in order to avoid relegation. No pressure, Michael.