Video: Canada Taunts and Suckerpunches Americans at World Junior Championships

FanHouse is keeping hockey fans updated on the happenings at the 2009 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships in Ottawa.

One of the more controversial moments of this years IIHF World Junior Championships happened during the United States-Canada game Wednesday.

John Tavares (2009 draft-eligible) scored his second goal in like five seconds (OK, it was close to a minute) to close Canada to within 3-2. As the hyped-up Canadians were celebrating Tavares' awesome goal, they skated right by the United States bench.

Taunting the Americans all the way by, Canadian forward Chris DiDomenico (NHL rights: Toronto) didn't see the stick of Team USA forward Eric Tangradi (Anaheim) hanging off the bench. DiDomenico ate a chunk of Tangradi's stick blade, and the rest of the celebrating Canadian players took exception to what they thought was a dirty play.

At the same time, United States forward James vanRiemsdyk (Philadelphia) was skating toward the bench. He had his head down, and ended up in the middle of the celebration line. After some shoves were exchanged, Stefan Della Rovere (Washington) of Canada suckerpunched vanRiemsdyk from behind.

As you watch the video, note that there is a linesman right in the middle of the fray, and yet Della Rovere was not penalized for his "hit". Video after the jump.



I highlight this now because of something I noticed in Saturday's Canada-Russia semifinal. Jordan Eberle scored the go-ahead goal in the second period. He celebrated at the Canadian bench, and then skated down the boards as if he was going to skate past the Russian bench. He instead was met and knocked to the ice (inadvertently) by the two linesmen working the game.

Eberle's intent is irrelevant, and I'm not trying to imply that he was going to taunt the Russian players. He simply wasn't going to be allowed near the Russian bench.

TSN broadcasters Gord Miller and Pierre Maguire noted that there has been more effort made by game officials to stop the taunting after goals. It has been going on throughout the tournament, and it's too bad it took a scrum like this one to highlight the issue.

Emotions tend to run high in tournaments like this, as you have young kids proud to play for their country. Of course, there's also the added pressure of this being a heavily-scouted event. Wednesday night, the Americans did a terrible job of controlling their emotions, taking too many penalties and not responding well to Canada's physicality. Contrary to what I thought, they did then let that negativity carry over to Friday's quarterfinal game against Slovakia.

That said, part of the learning process is making sure the kids know how to control their emotions. For the most part, everyone has done a good job of this, but hopefully coaches for all the teams can use Wednesday's fracas as a teaching tool.