A few random thoughts as your correspondent packs up and heads back to Toronto for the medal round of the World Junior Championship:

* The next time our friends at Hockey Canada and TSN remind us how important this tournament is to Canada’s hockey identity and cultural fabric – and that should happen in say, the next 30 seconds or so – it might be relevant to point out that only one in 10 Canadians actually watched Canada’s preliminary-round games on television and, in Montreal at least, that patriotism has definitive limit.

The attendance figures for this event in Montreal were a disaster. The fact that there were 5,500 empty seats for Canada’s game against Finland and about 3,000 for the New Year’s Eve game against USA indicate Hockey Canada badly misjudged this market. The attendance at the games not involving Canada were downright pathetic.

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