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World Junior Preview: McDavid vs. Eichel (also featuring like 200 other players)

ST CATHARINES, ON - DECEMBER 15: Connor McDavid #17 sits on the bench during the Canada National Junior Team practice at the Meridian Centre on December 15, 2014 in St Catharines, Ontario, Canada. (Photo by Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images)
ST CATHARINES, ON - DECEMBER 15: Connor McDavid #17 sits on the bench during the Canada National Junior Team practice at the Meridian Centre on December 15, 2014 in St Catharines, Ontario, Canada. (Photo by Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images)

It's just about that time of year again, when Canada descends into a frenzy over a bunch of 19-year-old kids not-winning a gold medal while the rest of the world looks on impassively like, “Hmm, yes that certainly is a mid-season hockey tournament.”

 

But this year's IIHF World Junior Championship is different for two reasons: 1) It is being played in Montreal and Toronto, so you know that the second these Canadian kids don't beat Slovakia or Germany by 60, the team bus is going to be pelted with rotten eggs all the way back to the hotel, and 2) The consensus Nos. 1 and 2 picks in the coming draft will be going head-to-head as they headline the two best teams in the tournament by a mile.

For all intents and purposes, World Junior, as always, boils down to what's going to happen for the United States and Canada, two teams that, were the universe in any way reasonable, would just play for the gold in this tournament pretty much every year. Is Sweden good? Sure. Is Russia? Ehhhhh. Finland won it last year what about them? Not really no. Is there any other reason for another team to even bother showing up? Of course there isn't, unless they really like losing by six goals.

I just listed five of the 10 countries participating in the tournament this year, and those are the only five to medal in this tournament over the last five years. And Finland's gold last year was their only takeaway from an otherwise dismal series of crushing defeats in that time.

So that is to say: World Junior is typically not in any way interesting unless one of these four giants of the tournament — Russia, Sweden, the US, and Canada — are playing another of these four giants. Not that upsets can't happen — Switzerland's Nino Niederreiter scored in overtime to bounce Russia from the tournament in 2010 — and not that there aren't very exciting NHL prospects on even the worst of these teams (the Czechs have Boston's David Pastrnak, the Russians have St. Louis's Ivan Barbashev, the Swiss have Nashville's Kevin Fiala, and so on). But if you want to get to that Sweden/Russia game on the 29th, or — and good luck to you — the US/Canada game on New Year's Eve, you're probably going to have to be a millionaire, or kill someone, or both. (Good news: The former will find the latter much easier to get away with!)

And even then, things can get ugly when the best teams in this tournament play one that's even a minor step below them. Yeah, Canada (hilariously) lost to Russia in overtime in an exhibition last week, but shots in that game were 53-20. They smoked the Swiss 6-0 next time out and it could have been a lot worse than that. Meanwhile, the United States crushed Boston University — which has players considerably older than 19 — 5-2, then beat the Swedes 10-5 (and even that game was 7-2 when probable US starter and future Canuck Thatcher Demko came out of the game halfway through).

There is just about no reason to watch most preliminary round games for these reasons. Unless, of course, you really like seeing Americans and Canadians run up the score on a bunch of losers from Denmark (DENMARK IS IN THIS TOURNAMENT!!!!) or whatever.

So let's instead focus on those two teams. They are, if we're being honest, the only two you actually care about, and they are of course top-lined by Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel.

 

LAKE PLACID, NY - AUGUST 04: Jack Eichel #9 of USA Blue skates against Team Sweden during the 2014 USA Hockey Junior Evaluation Camp at the Lake Placid Olympic Center on August 4, 2014 in Lake Placid, New York. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Jack Eichel
LAKE PLACID, NY - AUGUST 04: Jack Eichel #9 of USA Blue skates against Team Sweden during the 2014 USA Hockey Junior Evaluation Camp at the Lake Placid Olympic Center on August 4, 2014 in Lake Placid, New York. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** Jack Eichel

These are the two guaranteed-no-doubt-about-it-easy-tap-in Nos. 1 and 2 picks in the coming draft, and most scouts will tell you that there's still a decent-sized gap between McDavid and Eichel.

Would that be true if Eichel were from, say, I don't know, Canada? Or if he played in, say, the QMJHL? It's awful difficult to say (but probably the answer is yes because the hockey world is very biased against Americans and you all know that). What is more clear is the fact that if Eichel had been the player he is and of-age for any of the previous five or six drafts he would have been the No. 1 overall pick with considerable ease, such is his capability as a barely-18-year-old. McDavid, for his part, won't turn 18 until Jan. 13. 

Both are phenomenal, obviously. McDavid was on 51 points in just 18 games playing against a bunch of children in the OHL, and these are numbers that exceed even those produced by Sidney Crosby in the QMJHL a decade ago. I don't have the real understanding of the history of major junior to say, “He's the greatest junior player ever,” or anything like that, but his points-per-game in the OHL this year (2.83) is pretty much in line with that of Wayne Gretzky (2.84), who I hear turned out to be pretty good.

As for Eichel, well, he's turning in what could be considered the second-best season by a draft-eligible NCAA rookie in the last 22 years, and almost certainly beyond. What he's doing to turn around Boston University's program basically singlehanded after an abysmal 2013-14 has been amazing: 27 points in 16 games playing against the best competition imaginable, and the average NCAA player's age this season is about 21.9 years old (i.e. two years older than the oldest player McDavid plays every night) but players are as old as 25.

And if you're sick of hearing about McDavid vs. Eichel, well, tough noogies, bud. You're in for two more damn weeks of it at the very least. Even when the US and Canada aren't playing each other, each goal they score or set up or concede will be stacked up against the accomplishments of the other. That's just how the game will be for the rest of the season and, perhaps, the remainder of their careers as well.

But there are, if you can believe it, other players on their teams in this tournament. And the supporting casts for both are actually some of the best either country has seen in a while.

Canada features 11 guys who were already first-round picks, McDavid, and Lawson Crouse, who's projected to go in the top 10 of this draft or so. Five more guys, including stellar future Habs netminder Zach Fucale, were selected in the second round. So that's 18 guys right there who are premium, best-in-their-age-group talents. It's not that much different from what Canada always brings, really, but some of the top-end talent they're loading up is impressive.

Meanwhile, the US — which still hasn't set its final roster as of this writing because it's waiting for Devils pick and Boston College defenseman Steve Santini to be fully healthy if he's not already — is a little less talented, but perhaps a little bit deeper. Only five guys taken in the first round already, and seven more second-round picks. But that doesn't include three players currently playing in the NCAA who are draft eligible (Eichel and two defensemen, probable No. 3 pick Noah Hanifin, and top-10 guy Zach Werenski), and a borderline first-rounder in Tri-City defenseman Brandon Carlo. There's also Auston Matthews, a kid who's barely 17, and who is looking very much like the No. 1 overall pick in 2016; he's already listed as 6-foot-2 and 190 pounds, but having seen him play in person he's probably bigger than that.

So let's get into probable reasons that Canada and the US will both win and lose this tournament.

For the host Canadians, there's a potential for an upset because Canada has spent the last five years melting down spectacularly. The US has won two golds — and Russia, Sweden, and Finland one each — while the Canadians have gone without since 2009. This is going to be brought up ad nauseam as well, and any number of reasons (see also: Excuses) will be advanced for this.

One thing Canada very rarely does is bring its best possible roster, in much the same way it tries and fails to shoot itself in the foot most Olympics, instead opting to bring “lunch pail” and “blue collar” kids who really only succeed in making the team worse. Canada loses a lot of these tournaments because they don't have as much depth as they should, and because they try to force skill players to play shutdown roles instead of letting them be skill players. Also, they let too many foreigners into the CHL haha.

There's also the issue of goaltending, which has plagued them for years. Often, they don't break .910 for the tournament, and Fucale's the guaranteed starter for this team unless something goes horribly wrong. Which is a problem, because his save percentage in the QMJHL so far this season is a robust .890.

But if they win, it's because they had so much skill that it literally didn't matter at all. McDavid might be able to will them to victory all by himself. He's that good, but also he has a lot of help.

And for the US, it's that depth they've had basically any time they've ever won gold that will carry them. This year they also have the kind of top-end talent to go punch for punch with whatever Canada can throw at them, but they also have size and physicality on the blue line (doubly so if Santini gets into the tournament, because that dude is liable to kill some Quebecois 18-year-old in open ice if he gets the chance). They also have a very, very good netminder in Demko.

If they lose, it's because of the lack of elite talent compared with Canada, and also because they're going pretty young. Bringing along as many as five draft-eligible players — including one who turned 17 in September — might speak to the mediocrity of the nation's 19-year-olds, or the top-end talent those individuals tend to provide; again, Eichel, Matthews, Hanifin, and Werenski are basically guaranteed top-10 picks.

As usual, this is Canada's tournament to lose on paper, but Canada plays with a terrible amount of pressure and bad decision-making behind it every year. That almost always opens up the field a little bit. Five teams have seized on the opportunity presented to them in each of the last five tournaments, and no one is as well-positioned to make an entire nation cry about a mid-season junior tournament as the US.

I mean hey, what happened one of the last times Canada hosted? Oh right!

Follow all the WJC action at Yahoo Sports' junior hockey blog Buzzing The Net.