December 30, 2021 by Ryan Lotsberg

The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) cancelled the remainder of the 2022 World Junior Championship on Wednesday. The decision came after three games were cancelled due to four players on three teams receiving positive COVID tests.

“Together with the teams, we came into this event with full confidence in the protocols that were put in place by the IIHF, the LOC, Alberta Health, Alberta Health Services, and the Public Health Agency of Canada,” said IIHF President Luc Tardif. “The ongoing spread of COVID-19 and the Omicron variant forced us to readjust our protocols almost immediately upon arrival to attempt to stay ahead of any potential spread. This included daily testing and the team quarantine requirement when positive cases were confirmed.”

Those readjusted protocols were ridiculous, and they ultimately resulted in the cancellation of the tournament.

Chris Peters of dailyfaceoff.com wrote that when a player tested positive at the tournament, everyone else on the team was considered a close contact, meaning that they had to isolate as well. That’s different than the rules that the IIHF had put forth prior to the tournament that said that if a player was a close contact but was fully vaccinated and had no symptoms, then he didn’t have to isolate. 

Peters also reported that multiple teams in Red Deer complained about the “moving target” when it came to those protocols. I can’t say that I blame them for being frustrated by that change, especially after Hockey Canada Vice President of Events Dean McIntosh said that “I would tell you by Canadian standards we run over 90 per cent fully vaccinated and by non-Canadian standards we run at 98 or 99 per cent probably, but we do have a couple that fall outside.”

Teams play a maximum of seven games in eleven days at the World Juniors. Teams don’t get more than one day off between games. The CDC has shared that Omicron is the most transmissible one to two days before and two to three days after symptom onset. If a player tests positive at the tournament, then the odds are that he would’ve played a game and exposed everyone on both teams to the virus within the previous two days. 

The decision makers should’ve known that the readjusted isolation requirements that Peters reported would’ve resulted in the tournament not being completed! It was doomed to fail from the moment that someone decided that the whole team would have to isolate after a positive test. Trying to play the tournament with those protocols was asinine.

It’s nobody’s fault that the Omicron variant is causing a rise in COVID cases right now. However, the change in the quarantine protocol was unnecessary in my opinion. Close contacts of people that test positive for COVID haven’t had to isolate in Alberta since July 29. That didn’t change with Omicron, so it wasn’t a government mandated protocol change. 

Forcing entire teams to quarantine after one positive test was excessively cautious. Teams were allowed to bring twenty five players to this tournament instead of twenty three for a reason. Games shouldn’t have been cancelled unless a team had seven or more positive cases, which would have made playing the game not fair to that team. They could’ve also followed the lead of the NBA, NFL, and NHL by bringing the quarantine period down to five or six days since the CDC released its findings about the transmission of Omicron.

The way that the IIHF handled this situation was confusing. They claim to have acted in the best interest of the health and safety of the participants. The cancellation of the remainder of the tournament and the excessively cautious quarantine protocol is evidence that they did act with the health and safety of the participants in mind. 

However, I’d argue that they wouldn’t have started the tournament at all if they truly cared about the health and safety of the participants. That’s how they handled the Women’s U-18 tournament and many other upcoming IIHF events, but they still tried to play this tournament. They made the wrong decision if health and safety was their main concern.

The timing of the rise in cases was a factor. Teams were already here when things started getting out of hand. However, money was clearly a factor as well. They missed out on last year’s potential revenue from fans, and they spent a lot of money on the bubble. It was bad enough that they had to cut ticket packages in half, void single game tickets, and close concessions two days before the tournament. I’m sure that cancelling the event was the last thing they wanted to do. 

They lost three games that really didn’t need to be lost, and that caused the “sportive integrity of the event” to be compromised. If they were trying to complete the tournament, then they shot themselves in the foot with their ridiculous quarantine protocol.

Either way, the IIHF dropped the ball here.

Additionally, McIntosh told the Associated Press that movement of players and team staff during the tournament would be like the bubble edition of the tournament played last year.

However, Peters reported that multiple teams in Red Deer complained that members of the public were allowed to stay at the same hotel as the teams. He also stated that there was a wedding reception planned at the hotel where the teams from the USA and Sweden are staying. There are now rumours that a wedding in Red Deer took down the World Junior tournament. 

I’ll let you evaluate the validity of those rumours for yourself. All I know is that there’s a discrepancy between what Hockey Canada said would be happening and what people in the hotels said was happening during the shortened tournament. If the teams were in anything that wasn’t a bubble while the games weren’t happening, then that was a catastrophic failure, especially after making teams quarantine for two days after arrival in Alberta. Why they wouldn’t just have them immediately enter a bubble upon arrival is beyond me.

I feel awful for the players, the coaches, their families, and everyone involved in organizing the tournament. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for a lot of the people involved, and it’s beyond disappointing to see it end like this. 

As a fan, I’m disappointed in how it all played out. I was willing to look past the last minute changes to my ticket package. I’m more frustrated that the crowds for the few games that I did get to see were small and that the atmosphere was lacking. I’m disappointed that I didn’t get to see what was looking like a strong Canadian team go for gold in my city in person, especially after witnessing the disappointing 2012 semi-final loss to Russia in Calgary. I truly hope that Edmonton gets another chance to host a World Junior tournament in the near future, but we might not get so lucky again for a while now, if at all.