The IIHF World Junior championship is often considered a tournament for 19-year-olds, but the edition proved otherwise despite its cancellation.
Canada’s Connor Bedard and Russia’s Matvei Michkov, the top two prospects for the NHL Entry Draft, quickly got comfortable and outperformed most of the players eligible for the Draft.
Bedard, the youngest player at the World Juniors at 16, wrote on Dec. 28 against Austria. He joined Wayne Gretzky at the age of 16 to score a hat-trick for Canada and he became the sixth Canadian to score four goals in one game of the tournament.
The native of North Vancouver, British Columbia, started the tournament as the 13th striker with time on the second Powerplay unit. In the first match against the Czech Republic, he played 12 minutes and 23 seconds before switching to 14:33 against Austria.
After two games, Bédard scored four goals and one assist and led Canada with 12 shots. He finished second on the team in scoring, just behind the Winnipeg Jets and Cole Perfetti.
Michkov turned out to be the best Player of Russia and saw a big Role on the first attempt. In the opening match against Sweden, he led all Russian forwards to YOU with 18:18 and played 16:24 against the Swiss.
The 17-year-old, who was the youngest player in the Russian team with a birthday at the end of December, led the team with three goals in two games.
In their only Game before the tournament, Michkov homered twice and Bédard scored one in Canada’s 6-4 victory over Russia.
While Bédard and Michkov have stormed into the World Juniors, it’s not the first time the two players have dominated a tournament this year.
At the IIHF U18 World Championship in May, Mikhkov led the tournament with 12 goals and 16 points, when the Russians won silver and fell in the gold medal match to Bedard and Canada. Bedard finished third in the tournament with seven goals and 14 points.
With the World Juniors, Bédard will for now return to the Regina Pats of the WHL. As the first player in WHL history to reach the state of emergency at the age of 15 and enter the league, he scored 14 goals and 24 points in 24 games this season.
Michkov, who signed a five-year contract with SKA St. Petersburg last December, has scored two goals and five points in 13 games in the KHL and has spent time with the team’s MHL and VHL teams this season.
