Photo Credit: Katie LeBoutillier (Inside The Rink)
The opening day of the 2025 World Junior Championship was a full roster of games. Sweden, Slovakia, Germany, the USA, Switzerland, Czechia, Canada, and Finland were all lined up to face off.
Let’s discuss the day’s third game on the docket: Czechia and Switzerland.
Team Czechia
It was clear from the beginning that Czechia dominated the game. You have to play to win tournaments like the World Juniors and make it onto scouts’ radars, and Czechia showed just that. This World Junior team knows the formula to win and has been knocking on the door for the last few years in the tournament.
Czechia has the size, the speed, and the goaltending. 19-year-old netminder Michael Hrabel is currently playing for UMass. During the 2023-2024 season, he dressed in a total of 30 games and had a 2.59 Goals Against Average and a .912 Save Percentage. Hrabel’s ability to screen the puck is partly due to his size; he is 6’6″. Hrabel can tighten his game during the close battles and the comfort zones. Team Czechia can work cohesively as a unit on the ice and pressure the opponent when necessary. The team can also take advantage of open opportunities, i.e., empty net goals late in the final frame. All five goals that were scored by Team Czechia today had separate scorers: Miroslav Holinka, Eduard Sale, Ondrej Kos, Jakub Stancl, and Petr Sikora.
Team Switzerland
Team Switzerland returned and looked like a much put-together hockey team in the final frame. Switzerland has some good qualities that, if they continue to build on, they can win games throughout the tournament. The team sends in their best players on the faceoff with quick reflexes and a low stance. Switzerland also showed that they have excellent stickhandling while in the faceoff circle.
Switzerland has an innate ability to find ways to create chances to score and show when they are in attack mode. Switzerland was able to score one goal against Czechia, which was due to Czechia’s netminder not getting back to the other side of the net to block the shot. This game is the first of the tournament, and if Switzerland can work on those attributes, it can be a contender in the games. The lone goal was scored by Leo Braillard, a 19-year-old winger who currently plays for the Lethbridge Hurricanes in the WHL. Something to note for Team Switzerland: They have a 15-year-old on the roster, a forward named Jonah Neuenschwander.
The next matchups for both of these teams are as follows:
Switzerland vs Slovakia- 12/27/2024 at 1:00 pm
Czechia vs Kazakhstan- 12/28/2024 at 1:00 pm
Switzerland vs Sweden- 12/29/2024 at 12:00 pm
Czechia vs Slovakia- 12/29/2024 at 5:00 pm
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