Report: Cancelled World Juniors to be rescheduled?

In case you missed the news earlier today, the 2022 World Junior Championships has been cancelled.

What an absolute preventable shame. Shame on the IIHF for mishandling things so badly.

Yesterday team USA was forced to forfeit their game against Switzerland after two players tested positive for COVID-19 and their entire team was forced into quarantine. Today Russia was forced to forfeit their game against Slovakia for the same reasons, ditto for Czechia against Finland.

Now, the IIHF has decided apparently to nix the entire tournament... over half a dozen positive cases from asymptomatic players. I mean... there's got to be a better solution, no? Is the IIHF this blindsided by positive test cases? They had to have known that this was a possibility and have a contingency plan that prevents an outright cancellation? Well... evidently not. Such a sad state of affairs...

I literally cannot believe this is happening... but then again how many times have I said that to myself in 2020 and 2021?

In their explanation of what exactly transpired today, multiple TSN analysts put forth the idea of rescheduling the tournament during the 2022 Winter Olympics or for sometime in June or July, 2022. More to come on that.

"It's not impossible to reschedule the tournament," said TSN analyst Craig Button. "But there are huge obstacles in the way of it."

"The perfect outcome would be to hold the World Juniors during the Women's U-18 tournament," said James Duthie. "It makes sense, James but... there's NHL development camps, there's lots going on in the hockey world at that time. Yes, we know the schedule can be tight but that window is there because there's less stress on other leagues. It seems that that might be the very best time for player availability."

In all honesty though, this was an entirely predictable outcome and if the IIHF wasn't prepared to "push through" a rash of positive test cases, then the entire tournament should have been held in a bubble like it was in 2020/2021. You may recall that last year the tournament ran without a hitch while the players quarantined themselves in hotels, restaurants and Edmonton's Rogers Place.

This year the IIHF elected to open things back up a bit and... well here we are. Again, entirely predictable. If the IIHF wasn't prepared to deal with a number of positive test cases then they either should have run this entire tournament in a bubble or they should have outright cancelled or postponed it. It's clear to me that there was a ridiculous lack of foresight and now the IIHF is scrambling to get things under control... in the end it's hockey fans who pay the ultimate price. So tired of this...