World Juniors tournament wraps up in Moncton

After eight days of almost non-stop hockey, Moncton fans lined up for the last time on Monday to catch the 2023 World Juniors in-person in the city.

“I’ve been watching this tournament for almost 40 years on TV, and to have it in our city and be able to come watch it live, it’s amazing,” said hockey fan Myles Phinney.

“I’ve probably been to about half the games of the tournament,” he adds. “I got lucky, we wound up with some tickets, the family got some tickets and than I watched everything else on TV, of course.”

Marking the quarterfinals, the city saw two new teams hit the ice -- Sweden and Germany -- which left fans with a new level of excitement as they got to watch players who, so far, they’ve mostly seen on TV.

"It's going to be fun, especially Sweden. It's a team that you've obviously seen live... or on TV play Canada,” said Andre Savoie ahead of the noon game. “Other than that, the Germans are obviously a pretty decent team, but unfortunately, they're probably going to be on the short end of the stick today."

In total, he’s seen six games in-person and quite a few at home.

“It’s pretty amazing that it’s in Moncton,” he said. “I moved to London, Ontario, and didn’t get a chance to see much there because of COVID-19, but coming back to Moncton and seeing such good hockey at home is pretty fun.”

In total, Moncton saw 12 tournament games for this year’s World Juniors, but good hockey wasn’t the only thing that brought people out and about. Over the last week or so, the World Juniors helped bring an entire experience to the city.

"We had kind of a tailgate party before each 5 o'clock game, we had breakfast in the morning, United Way and the Woman's Progress Club helped us out with both of those,” said Team Moncton Co-Chair, Bill Whalen. “Those were very well attended. We had our hockey houses, a number of the bars and restaurants in town where they were showing the games on big screens and I talked to all of them and they're just over the moon on how many people came out."

He says there was even a coffee shop that put the five flags of the teams playing in Moncton with the word “coffee” underneath in their languages.

“Businesses went out of their way to make people feel welcome and make the community feel part of it and I think it succeeded,” he said, adding, “Moncton has shown what it can do hosting international events.”

Team Moncton also held a big New Year’s Eve event, which Whalen estimates about 6,000 people attended. Although the World Juniors won’t be back next year, he says the goal is to turn that event into an annual one.

For now, the city is waiting on the final numbers to see just how big of a boost the tournament had on the city.

"We were expecting somewhere between $10 [million] and $20 million, would be the economic impact and so we'll see what that is and we'll do an analysis of how many visitors,” said Whalen. “The Crowne [Plaza], somebody was talking to the GM, and they were 96 per cent occupancy on New Year’s Eve in a period where they're normally less than 20 per cent."

Although the action on the ice is wrapping up in the city, the festivities will continue until a champion is named.

“The plaza will be activated right through the finals, so both quarterfinal games from Halifax [Monday] will be on the big screen, both semi-final games on Wednesday and the finals on Thursday night,” he said.

“The oval will be open, Explore NB will be here serving hot chocolate and doing s’mores and the activities will continue.”

As for the winning country, that decision will be made in Halifax where the tournament continues this week.