2025 World Juniors Recap

On the evening of January 5th this edition of the World Junior Hockey Championship ended with a thrilling 4-3 overtime win crowning the United States of America (USA) as back-to-back champions. This marked the first time in tournament history that the USA has won back-to-back gold medals. There were plenty more firsts in this year's tournament. We saw a shocking upset where Latvia won their first ever game against Canada in a 3-2 shootout game where everyone was introduced to Latvian goalie Linards Feldbergs who shown with 55 saves in the win. American goaltender Trey Augustine became the winningest American goaltender in World Juniors history passing Jack Campbell with 12 wins to wrap up his World Juniors career. Lane Hutson of the USA team became the first defender to lead the tournament in goal scoring wrapping up the tournament with 11 points to go along with his tournament best +11 rating. Hutson’s performance earned him a spot on the team of the tournament, but still wasn’t enough to topple Swedish defender Axel Sandin-Pelikka who repeated as the defender of the tournament. The two defenders were joined by forwards Ryan Leonard (also took home best forward and MVP honours), and Gabe Perrault from the USA, Czech forward Jakub Stancl and Finnish goalie Petteri Rimpinen to round out the all-tournament team. The bronze medal game went into a record 14th round of shootout to decide the winner with Eduard Sale beating Swedish backup Marcus Gildof to clinch the bronze medal for the Czechs. The gold medal game also could not be decided in the allotted 60 minutes, needing sudden death 3-on-3 overtime to decide the winner. American Teddy Stiga was sent in on a breakaway with the Finns changing and made no mistake slotting the puck past Finnish goalie Petteri Rimpinen to seal gold for the Americans and leaving Finland with silver. Host nation Canada once again crashed out in the quarterfinals with another one goal lose to the Czechs marking back-to-back tournaments where the Canadians have fallen to the Czechs in the quarters. The Canadians will look to bounce back next year in Minnesota with a new group of players, and maybe coaches? There were plenty of standouts from smaller teams in the tournament including Latvians Eriks Mateiko and Linards Feldbergs who orchestrated the upset over Canada and almost pulled off another pushing the Swedes to the limit in a tightly contested quarterfinal. Slovak forward and St. Louis Blues prospect Dalibor Dvorsky dazzled in his fourth World Juniors carrying his Slovakian team to the quarterfinals where they ultimately came up short against a stingy Finnish team. The Swiss had the youngest player in the tournament with Jonah Neunschwander at 15 years old. Despite playing limited minutes and only dressing for 3 of the 5 games the Swiss played, it will be great experience for a player who has four more years of eligibility and is already playing in the top Swiss league against men. Neunschwander and Lars Steiner will look to be pillars on this Swiss team for years to come as they project as highly touted prospects for the 2027 and 2026 National Hockey League (NHL) drafts respectively. Undrafted German forward Julius Sumpf was one of the lone bright spots for another disappointing tournament for the Germans that saw them just sneak by the Kazakhs to avoid relegation in a second straight relegation battle for the Germans at the World Juniors. Sumpf had 7 points including 2 goals and 5 assists that include 3 points in the relegation game and the game winning goal. The German forward put on display his dominant two-way game and with his size and face-off acumen (54.20% win rate across the tournament) could be attracting NHL scouts to take a chance on him with at least a development invite next year. The Kazakhs had a rough year in the top division and for the first time in their tournament history they were relegated in the first tournament after getting promoted. They did put up a fight in the relegation game narrowly losing to the Germans. Key contributors in their promotion also played prevalent roles in their 2025 tournament with Beibarys Orazov and Kirill Lyapunov providing 4 assists and 3 goals respectively between the two players. Next years tournament will see Denmark back in the top division and will once again see the USA and Canada pitted against each other in the preliminary round.