Team Canada was upset by Latvia with a chaotic performance and more from the second day of the 2025 World Junior Championships

The second day of the 2025 World Juniors was another busy four-game day, but one that was overshadowed by Canada’s lackluster, lifeless performance against Latvia, a penalty shootout defeat that will go down as the biggest upset in the tournament’s history.

Here are the notes and thoughts of the day The athleteAuthors Corey Pronman and Scott Wheeler cover it all.

• Slovakia beat Switzerland 2-1 in an important game for a place in the quarter-finals. Draft-eligible Jan Chovan scored the winning goal in the final minutes after Capitals prospect Leon Muggli lost the ball rashly.
• Finland beat Germany 3-1 in a game that saw only a single goal until the final seconds. Golden Knights prospect Tuomas Uronen was named Finland’s player of the game.
• Sweden beat Kazakhstan 8-1. Sabers prospect Anton Wahlberg scored two goals and four points. Victor Eklund, top prospect for the 2025 NHL Draft, was named player of the game by Sweden with a goal and two points.
• Canada lost in an eight-round shootout to Latvia, a team it had played four times previously at the World Junior Championships and beat 41-4 overall. Flyers first-rounder Jett Luchanko and Avalanche first-rounder Calum Ritchie scored for Canada. Capitals prospect Eriks Mateiko scored a goal for Latvia.

Canada in disarray

When Hockey Canada made its final selection camp decision and head of management group Peter Anholt met with the media at the team’s hotel in Ottawa a few weeks ago, he talked about how much better prepared this team was than the disappointing team , which was eliminated with a whimper in the quarterfinals a year ago. They named their coaching staff earlier, he said. They participated in the World Junior Summer Showcase this year after there was no World Juniors program last summer, he said. “I really know this player,” he said again and again when asked about his boys. He talked about how he’s been with this group since the Hlinka Gretzky Cup and all the guys from that team who were on this one. In Al Murray, they had brought back a chief scout who had won Stanley Cups for nearly 40 years and who had twice been their chief evaluator for gold medal-winning teams.

A year ago, then-head coach Alan Letang spoke after almost every game about his team’s difficulty reaching the net and finishing plays in the dirty areas around the goal crease. It was the same story on Friday evening. It was only in the run-up to this year’s tournament that employees publicly expressed their disappointment with last year’s team. Scott Walker, a member of the management group, flew to meet with returnees Tanner Molendyk and Brayden Yager to tell them they needed to set a higher standard for this group. Team Canada defeated Latvia 10-0. This year, Hockey Canada set out to build a more competitive roster. And the squad they assembled with 11 first-rounders couldn’t eliminate Latvia – with its two young players drafted. They never really came close. Before their 8-0 penalty shootout victory, they gave the game into Latvia’s hands with 42.4 seconds left in overtime after too many players were inexcusably left on the bench. Their 56 shots on goal don’t even tell the story, as you can count on one hand how many of them were truly threatening.

It also feels like they don’t know their guys, and that was most evident in their terrible, disjointed 1-on-7 power play. The fierce but diminutive Tanner Howe didn’t initially look like he would fit in at the net. Oliver Bonk, who hasn’t led his own junior club’s power play in recent years, didn’t seem to fit in the top league. Sam Dickinson, who leads that unit and leads all power-play quarterbacks in the OHL with nine power-play goals and 19 power-play points in 26 games this season, didn’t even get a look at any of their units on Friday after they had at the start of the The tournament went 0-6, and their best power play guy, Matthew Schaefer, left the game and didn’t return (a story that would have been the story of the day on any other day). Bradly Nadeau, a frequent winger on every team he’s ever played for, is positioned in the bumper looking for tips and redirects. Carson Rehkopf, the team’s leading scorer, who scored 72 goals in his last 87 OHL games and led the OHL in power-play goals last year, has yet to be registered for the tournament after scoring the goal during selection camp.

Forget all the talk about the players they gave up – and the talent and power play skills of guys like Zayne Parekh, Beckett Sennecke and Andrew Cristall – this is the team they picked and there shouldn’t be any excuses for it give what she looked like on Friday.

The heat deserves to be turned up all the way, and it starts at the top. – Scott Wheeler

Radivojevic leads Slovakia

Luka Radivojevic was named Slovakia’s best player against Switzerland. It was by no means a perfect game for him, as for the only Swiss goal he was beaten by a player coming out of the penalty area. Otherwise he was Slovakia’s most noticeable player. The 2025-eligible defenseman showcased his skill, skill and vision throughout the game, making a ton of plays. He’s a small defenseman, so some NHL scouts have reservations about his ultimate projection, but he showed why he could go anywhere from the second to fourth round because he has real offensive talent. — Corey Pronman

The Finns need more top strikers

After being blanked by Canada, the Finns needed an empty ball to eliminate Germany. They have lost a goalkeeper twice in two games and need more from their top strikers. Sabers first-rounder Konsta Helenius, who was a good player in the AHL, was a top player in the Liiga last year and even played for the men’s national team, made some plays but had one assist in two games and was far from dominant . Stars first-rounder Emil Hemming and Sharks second-rounder Kasper Halttunen, their two best pure scorers (Halttunen has the strongest shot in the tournament, for my money), were non-factors. I liked Kraken contender Julius Miettinen at the top, but they need a lot more of their big guns up front. – Scott Wheeler

(Photo: Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press via AP)