Embarrassing crowds at the World Juniors in Edmonton... even for Canada's games

Earlier this week when the puck officially dropped on the 2022 World Junior Championships in Edmonton, you could hardly tell. 

There's been nearly no hype heading into the tournament and, as a result, attendance figures have been dismal.

The first iteration of the 2022 World Juniors was, of course, cancelled by the IIHF due to an outbreak of COVID-19 back in December. And by outbreak I mean four confirmed cases... amongst healthy teenage boys, but I digress...

In any case, the IIHF made the decision to cancel the WJC in December/January and made the genius decision to move it to the middle of September in Edmonton, a city that gets roughly three quality months of sunshine and warm weather per season. Surely hockey fans will want to flock to a giant arena in the middle of the summer, right? Seriously... how dumb can the IIHF be?

As you might expect, attendance for the opening days games has been absolute dreadful. And by dreadful I mean less that 500 people in attendance for some games.

Check it out:

Ouch... even the Arizona Coyotes are cringing at those figures.

I mean, just look at this:

That's absolutely brutal.

And if you think attendance for Team Canada's games is any better... think again...

Brutal...

And to be clear, I don't blame hockey fans in Alberta's capital. It's August 10th for crying out loud. People don't give a rip about hockey right now and they sure as heck don't want to be cooped up indoors on a beautiful summer day. Maybe if the IIHF hadn't acted so hastily back in December we might have actually gotten to experience the electricity of a packed house for a World Juniors game. To me, there's nothing quite like it and it's a damn shame that we won't get to see it done properly until next Holiday season. Until then, just tell me who wins the gold and how many goals Connor Bedard scores. That'll be enough for me...

To be perfectly frank, because of this and because Russia has been banned from the tournament (for reasons completely outside of the players' control) I'll always view the 2022 World Juniors as little more than an exhibition event.