from Mike Zeisberger of the Toronto Sun,

Given the sea of empty seats at the Air Canada Centre for Canada’s dominating 5-0 victory over Slovakia, how distressing will attendance figures be when the hosts face off against Latvia on Thursday night?

While the Canadians were out-shooting the Slovaks by a ridiculous 44-6 margin, upper deck corner areas like Section 318 were practically vacant. All in all, the official crowd total Tuesday night was 12,694, meaning about one-third of the arena was empty.

Keeping that in mind, we have to ask: Is it time for the world junior championships to move back to intermediate-sized communities like Halifax, which many fans were suggesting on Twitter?

During a recent 1-on-1 interview with Postmedia, Hockey Canada president Tom Renney said his organization was looking to hold the tournament in communities where the sport would leave the deepest footprint down to the grass roots level. Of course, the bigger the city, the more people there are to be impacted directly. That’s the theory anyway.

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