The 2025 IIHF World Junior Championship is just around the corner, and players and fans alike are counting the days until the great holiday tradition kicks off in Ottawa (26 December to 5 January).

Whether you’re a stalwart national team supporter, a hockey history pundit, or an NHL draft aficionado, there are plenty of intriguing scenarios to kick around in this year’s 10-team showcase of the best U20 players on the planet.

Let’s take a look at 10 burning questions about the 2025 World Juniors.

1) Can the U.S. make history by repeating?

This is a golden age for USA Hockey. Nearly 30 percent of active NHLers are American, and the U.S. is considered a legitimate gold-medal favourite for the 2026 Olympics. And the Americans come to Ottawa as defending World Junior champs, having trounced host Sweden 6-2 in the 2024 final.

However, here’s a curious fact: not only has the U.S. never won back-to-back WJC titles, but it has also never even played in consecutive gold medal games. That said, University of Denver coach David Carle, who returns behind the U.S. bench, is getting back nearly half of his stacked 2024 roster, and they will strive to end this troubling pattern.

2) Could McKenna emulate McDavid and Bedard?

If, as anticipated, Gavin McKenna cracks the Canadian roster, the likely #1 overall pick in the 2026 NHL Draft will face special scrutiny. When Canada debuts against Finland on Boxing Day, McKenna will just have turned 17. At that age, Connor McDavid racked up 11 points in Montreal and Toronto and earned a World Junior all-star team berth (2015). Connor Bedard set multiple Canadian World Junior records in Halifax with his 23-point run and was named MVP (2015). Both Connors also got gold medals.

Those are tough acts to follow. However, considering McKenna established a Canadian record with 20 points at the 2024 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 World Championship and now leads the WHL scoring race with the Medicine Hat Tigers, the dynamic Whitehorse-born forward might be up to the task.

3) Who will win the scoring title?

There are plenty of candidates to top the points race this year. For instance, the U.S. can deploy the top three scorers from Boston College: Gabe Perreault (the tournament’s highest-scoring returning forward, with 10 points in 2024), James Hagens (the projected #1 overall pick in 2025), and Ryan Leonard (the 2023 U18 Worlds golden goal-scorer and a 2024 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship participant).

Host Canada looks loaded offensively as usual, from young aces like McKenna and Porter Martone (a projected 2025 top-five pick) to returning 19-year-old stars like Brayden Yager and Matthew Wood. How about Finland’s Konsta Helenius, who is proving himself at 18 against men with the AHL’s Rochester Americans? Or Sweden’s Otto Stenberg, who put up nine points for the Juniorkronorna in his first WJC last year? Stay tuned.

4) Will there be a European champ again?

In the 2010’s, European nations won five out of 10 World Junior titles. However, since Finland topped the podium in 2019, it’s been all North America. Canada won gold in 2020, 2022, and 2023, while the U.S. triumphed in 2021 and 2024. On paper, the North American teams look stronger again this year, but the wonderful unpredictability of the World Juniors means you can’t rule out a surprise victor.

5) How strong is this Swedish defence?

Sweden infamously failed to win the World Juniors for 31 years. It broke a drought dating back to 1981 when Mika Zibanejad notched the golden goal in a 1-0 victory over the Russians in 2012. Today, the Swedes have gone 13 years without a championship, and if that’s to end, it will likely hinge on head coach Magnus Havelid’s blue line.

To have three 19-year-old defenders who were all 2023 first-round picks – Tom Willander (11th overall, Vancouver), Axel Sandin Pelikka (17th overall, Detroit), and Theo Lindstein (29th overall, St. Louis) – is an enviable luxury. Their puck-moving prowess and positional play could determine whether or not Sweden returns to the gold medal game.

6) Which repeat WJC participant will shine brightest?

Sandin Pelikka is participating in his third World Juniors, and he’s far from the only familiar face who could be a difference-maker in Ottawa.

Dalibor Dvorsky is poised to play his fourth straight tournament, tying the shifty Slovak forward with multiple players – including fellow countryman Erik Cernak (2014-17) – for the World Junior record. U.S. goalie Trey Augustine aspires to be golden again in his third World Juniors. Meanwhile, Czech forward Eduard Sale, who already owns U20 silver (2023) and bronze (2024), would love to add a different-coloured medal to his collection.

7) Will Czechia continue to surge?

After years of struggling, Czech hockey is back – at every level. Along with their recent World Junior medals, the Czechs have garnered gold at the Worlds in Prague (2024), two bronzes at the IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship (2022, 2023), and silver at the U18 Women’s Worlds (2024).

It won’t be easy to keep the U20 party going. Head coach Patrik Augusta is facing massive roster turnover, and an injury to blueliner Adam Jiricek – 2024’s highest-drafted Czech (16th overall, St. Louis) – doesn’t help. Still, if Sale has a big tournament and towering goalie Michal Hrabal frustrates the opposition again, another medal run is feasible.

8) Is there an unsung hero in the making?

Remember when Canada’s Matt Halischuk (2008) and Akil Thomas (2020) scored gold-medal winners in overtime? Then there was the time Finland’s Toni Utunen notched the sudden-death goal that ended Canada’s home-ice hopes in the quarter-finals (2019). Or how about when goalie Denis Godla was named tournament MVP after backstopping Slovakia to a surprising bronze medal (2015)?

These are just a few players who were widely overlooked pre-World Juniors, but became true unsung heroes. It’ll be fun to see which under-the-radar kid steps up this year.

9) When will a shocking upset occur?

At the World Juniors, it is indeed a question of “when” rather than “if.” When the tournament last came to Ottawa in 2009, goalie Jaroslav Janus was the disruptor par excellence, making 44 stops as Slovakia stunned the Americans 5-3 in the quarter-finals. Ten years later in Victoria, Swiss netminder Luca Hollenstein was the hero with 41 stops in a 2-0 quarter-final upset over Sweden.

We’ve seen other historic shockers at different stages, like Kazakhstan’s 6-3 victory over Canada in the 1998 seventh-place game, or Denmark’s 3-2 overtime win over the Czechs in the 2017 round-robin. For both fans and favourites, the key is to take nothing for granted.

10) How will Ottawa embrace these World Juniors?

As the Canadian capital gears up to host the tournament for the second time, it can already take pride in a long, storied hockey history.

Between 1903 and 1927, the original incarnation of the Ottawa Senators won a whopping 11 Stanley Cups. The OHL’s Ottawa 67s added Memorial Cups in 1984 and 1999. And the city has made women’s hockey history, too, hosting Canada’s gold-medal victory in the inaugural 1990 Women’s Worlds. It all sets a high bar for contemporary pro clubs from the NHL Senators to the PWHL’s Ottawa Charge.

So what lies ahead over the holidays?

After setting a World Junior attendance record with 453,282 spectators in 2009, odds are strong that Ottawa’s U20 hockey passion will shine as brightly as the nearly 300,000 winter lights illuminating sites across the Capital Region through 7 January. Bring on that opening faceoff!