WJC Countdown: The NHL lockout allowed Canada to ice a historically-good team in 2005

The 2004-05 season was a dark one for hockey fans. 

For the first time in league history, the National Hockey League had an entire season cancelled due to labour dispute between the NHLPA and the owners. It was great for fans in Europe, who got a front seat to watching elite talents, but NHL fans were forced to watch their favourite players join random teams overseas and follow prospects at the AHL and Junior level.

But the biggest winner of the 2004-05 lockout? Canada’s World Junior team. 

Since there wasn’t an NHL season, Canada was able to select from a crop of prospects from the historically-good 2003 draft. If not for the lockout, most of these players would have been in the NHL, but Canada’s World Junior team had access to names from the 2003 draft like Patrice Bergeron, Ryan Getzlaf, Jeff Carter, Andrew Ladd, Mike Richards, Corey Perry, and Ryan Getzlaf. And, of course, they also had a soon-to-be drafted player in Sidney Crosby who was pretty good too. 

As a result, Canada fielded easily the greatest roster ever seen before at the U-20 tournament. 

Heading into the 2005 tournament, Canada had dealt with multiple years of frustration. It began in 1998 when the team ended a five-year gold medal streak with an embarrassing eighth-place finish that featured a loss in the placement round to Kazakstan. Between 1999 and 2004, Canada failed to win a gold medal, losing in the final four times, highlighted by a terrible loss to the United States in 2004 in which Marc-Andre Fleury scored on himself in the dying minutes of the third period. 

The 2005 ended Canada’s streak of frustration, absolutely plowing through the tournament like they were an NHL team competing against Junior teams. They went 4-0 in the preliminary round, outscoring opponents 32 to five. You would expect Canada to have any easy time with teams like Slovakia and Germany, but they beat both Finland and Sweden 8-1. 

The closest game Canada played in the entire tournament was a 3-1 win over the Czech Republic in the semifinal. After that, they played Russia in the gold medal game and skated to an easy 6-1 victory. All told, Canada won six-straight games at the tournament. They scored 41 goals and allowed seven. 

Team captain Patrice Bergeron was named Most Valuable Player after leading the tournament in scoring with 13 points. Bergeron, Jeff Carter, and defenceman Dion Phaneuf were named to the tournament’s All-Star team, but it easily could have featured more Canadians. Ryan Getzlaf scored 12 points, Sidney Crosby had six goals, and Jeff Glass allowed only seven goals in five games. 

Only three players on this team — both goalies Glass and Rejean Beauchemin and forward Stephen Dixon — didn’t go on to play a game in the NHL. Danny Syvret, Cam Barker, Shawn Belle, Jeremy Colliton, Anthony Stewart and Nigel Dawes didn’t have long NHL careers, but reached the level. Otherwise, the team is loaded with future NHL stars.

A good chunk of this team was also eventually resurrected for the 2010 and 2014 Olympics. Bergeron, Getzlaf, Perry, Crosby, Richards, and Weber won gold with Team Canada at the Olympics in both 2010 and 2014, and Seabrook was with the team in 2010. 

It’s difficult to imagine a country putting together a team as strong as Canada’s in 2005 at the World Juniors. Not only was 2003 a historically-good draft year, but the perfect timing of the lockout allowed players to return to the tournament when they surely would have been playing at the NHL level any other year.  

@cooom

CANADA’s GOLD-WINNING TEAM IN 2005