The team gets a preview of the facilities that will be the host for the 2018 World Junior Championship.
By Jourdon LaBarber from Sabres.com
One year remains before the World Junior Championship makes its return to Buffalo in 2018, but Team USA got a sneak peak of the future host destination by bringing its training camp for the 2017 tournament – which begins in Montreal and Toronto on Dec. 26 – to HarborCenter for the past five days. .
In that five-day window from Friday through Tuesday, the team was greeted to the best of what a Buffalo winter has to offer: a few days of blistering cold and sideways snow, with the option to avoid it all thanks to a hotel and practice rink that stands under the same roof.
Even when they went to watch the Buffalo Sabres play the New York Islanders at KeyBank Center on Friday night, it was merely a matter walking through a tunnel connecting one building to the next.
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“You could enjoy it as much as you wanted to,” said Jim Johannson, who is serving as the general manager of the U.S. National Junior Team for an eighth straight year. “I laughed at one of our coaches, he said ‘I’ve got to go outside, I haven’t had fresh air in two days.’ Because he literally didn’t have to.”
While the accommodations did well to help members of the team avoid the winter weather if they so choose, they’re also what has Johansson excited for Buffalo’s turn to host the tournament next year. Buffalo will become the first city in the Unites States to play host twice, having first done so in 2011.
In that tournament, most games were played at KeyBank Center with others being played at Dwyer Arena on the campus of Niagara University. Having the HarborCenter rink this time around to play host to those matchups that don’t make the main stage, Johannson said, makes for even more convenience.
“I think it’s actually the perfect setup from a facility standpoint, to be right next to the big rink and that the entire tournament will be right here,” he said. “I think that adds to the excitement. I’ve been in this building when it was full and it’s a good environment, it’s a good rink … It’s all about creating a good environment and a setting for that and I think this is certainly going to do that.”
Before the players themselves even begin to think about 2018, expectations are high for Team USA for the upcoming tournament in Canada. Nine players on the preliminary roster for the U.S. team were first-round draft picks in NHL, and 11 more were selected in the second and third rounds.
“It’s always high,” Johannson said of the team’s expectations. “It’s always high, but it’s a tournament where in the last seven years five different countries have won. It is, in my opinion, the most competitive IIHF tournament out of the group that they have.
“I think you can see now how soon the players from this tournament are on the NHL rosters are playing on their NHL teams. From a hockey fan’s perspective, it’s best-on-best and you get the guys who are future stars in the league.”
Perhaps even more telling of the current state of USA Hockey than the players who are on the roster are the ones who aren’t. Auston Matthews and Matthew Tkachuk are two examples of players who are eligible to play in this year’s World Juniors for Team USA but aren’t due to NHL commitments.
“It’s exciting,” Johannson said. “The success is great. There are five guys who are eligible for this team who are not here because of pro hockey. I say that positively, not in a negative way at all. Our goal has always been to develop players to move on and be able to play not only at this level but in the NHL and future USA programs, so I think we feel really good about it.”
Team USA will kick off their exhibition schedule with a game against Switzerland on Wednesday. The team opens its tournament in Toronto against Latvia on Dec. 26.