2017 World Junior Championship - Day One Open Thread. Barzal, Bellows kick off tournament

Holy crap. It’s World Junior time again already? Geez.

For Islanders fans - perhaps looking for at least a little hope for the future - Mathew Barzal of Team Canada and Kieffer Bellows of Team USA are the players to watch. Both were first round picks and both should provide some scoring punch for their respective squads (and, with a little luck, the Islanders eventually).

Today’s schedule features four preliminary round games and some of the bigger fish in the pond like Sweden, Russia and last year’s winner Finland playing at Bell Centre in Montreal and the Air Canada Centre in Toronto.

The mothership has the full schedule and a whole World Juniors hub. There are games everyday but January 1st. The gold medal game is Thursday, January 5th.

So where can you watch these games? Uh, good question. Maybe if you’re Canadian or an expert user of this internet everyone keeps talking about, you can get a stream of it. For the rest of us, there’s TSN, Sportsnet or the IIHF’s official site.

Good luck to the kids out there. Remember, this is supposed to be fun.