Excitement builds for World Junior camp finale between USA and Canada

By @MichaelCaples –

PLYMOUTH – Team USA will take on Finland in just over an hour (at least at the time this article was originally published) at USA Hockey Arena.

The game will be the second-to-last for the American squad at USA Hockey’s National Junior Evaluation Camp, being held at the organization’s new arena in Plymouth for the first time.

The attention, however, is focused on tomorrow’s game as much as today’s match with Finland.

When the game schedule reads USA vs. Canada, that tends to happen.

Tomorrow, Team USA and Team Canada will close out the NJEC in Plymouth with a rivalry showdown (preceded by another rivalry match between Finland and Sweden).

Puck drops at 7 p.m., and the game will be broadcasted live on NHL Network and TSN in Canada. As if it needed any more intensity, it’s the last chance for players on either squad to impress their respective coaching staffs this week for the upcoming World Junior tournament in Toronto and Montreal in December and January.

Tickets for the first-ever U.S. vs. Canada game at USA Hockey Arena are available at the USA Hockey Arena box office.

“Any time you have a USA vs. Canada game, there’s no such thing as an exhibition,” said Scott Monaghan, senior director of operations for USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program – now the main tenant of Plymouth’s two-sheet ice arena. “There is a lot of passion there; there is a healthy respect but a healthy rivalry. The kids on both of these teams are fighting for jobs at Christmas in a big event, so this will be an exciting and entertaining hockey game to watch. We’re hoping to have a full house for national TV, it’s going to advertise the southeast Michigan hockey community, and we’re hoping we get a lot of folks out for it. It will be live on NHL Network on Saturday night, so it will be a primetime game, it should be really, really cool, and we’re looking forward to having it.”

Monaghan said that he’s been pleased with how the NJEC has went thus far – its first time taking place in Plymouth. The prestigious summer event – previously held in Lake Placid, N.Y. – will return to Metro Detroit for at least the next two off-seasons.

“It’s great,” Monaghan said. “I used to work this camp every year; I haven’t been at it for six years. It’s just fun to see all the kids from the different countries and see our guys that used to be here a year or two older. They’re closer to being full-fledged men now. It’s fun to see them come back and it’s great for USA Hockey to have our different staffs all interacting and working together at our front porch here in Plymouth. We’re looking forward to hosting this event the next two years; we want to grow it, we want it to become kind of a staple in this area. ‘Hey, this is your one place to get your summer hockey fix of high-level competitive hockey.’”

The NJEC is serving as a tune-up for the international events slated to come through Plymouth for the upcoming 2016-17season – both for fans and for USA Hockey staffers.

“This is one of four, really, in this calendar year of 2016-17 – this is kind of the kick-off event,” Monaghan said. “In November, we’ll have an Under-18 Five Nations with the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland. Anybody who saw the one we did last year will know how good the games are, how competitive those teams are, how fun it is to watch. Then, the second half of the year, we’re really turning it over to our women’s national program in their pre-Olympic year. They’ll be coming in to play the Canadian women in December in what’s called Winterfest, which will be a national TV game, as well. Then on March 31, the world comes to Motown, and we have the women’s world championship with the top eight countries in the world, and we’re really looking forward to hosting that. The nuts and bolts of that are actually being worked on a little bit this week while this event is going on. This is also a great dry-run for that, because these are high-level teams, national TV in the building at the same time, and kind of pulling that behind-the-scenes stuff together.

“It should be a really great first full year with the program here, and with the building. We’ve got a lot of high profile events, and we just hope the community continues to embrace being the center for international hockey. They’ve been great so far, and I think a lot of eyes are being opened to how neat it is, what’s going on over here. We’re hoping that as the year goes on, more and more people get involved, come around, catch a game, buy tickets for an event, get involved as a volunteer, all of that kind of stuff.”