When kids plays a kids game, for nothing but the love of the sport, most watchers (except for those few crazy sideline-screaming, glass-pounding parents) get behind the kids.
That's why Prince George is proud of its Northern Capitals, the midget girls team that went undefeated to capture the female division of the prestigious Mac's AAA Midget Tournament for the first time.
Local hockey fans are no less proud of the Cariboo Cougars, the defending Mac's champions on the boys side, who lost in the semifinals.
It was also a great Christmas break for the Midget Tier 1 Coast of the North Cougars, winning the Richmond International tournament.
Meanwhile, it was a nightmare for Team Canada at the world junior tournament in Helsinki. After a rocky round-robin portion of the tournament, Canada was knocked out in the quarter-final by Finland, a country that had beaten them just once in their previous
10 world junior meetings.
The Team Canada players are only slightly older than the players on the midget teams
but the expectations on them are light years apart.
Midget players are kids but Team Canada juniors are young men, wearing the national colours. The players and the coaching staff are being roundly criticized for their poor showing.
The goat getting whipped the hardest in the wake of Saturday morning's loss is Jake Virtanen, the 19-year-old Vancouver Canucks forward.
Virtanen made the Canucks after a fabulous training camp in Prince George. Vancouver lent him to Team Canada to give him some more playing time, some leadership experience and a confidence boost.
Virtanen contributed just one point for Canada during the tournament. In the quarter-final loss, he took a four-minute penalty in the third period for two infractions on the same play, both the result of thoughtless and immature conduct by a frustrated player. While Canada didn't lose solely because of those penalties, they certainly didn't help a team trying to come from behind after squandering an early 2-0 lead.
"Goat-Medal Contender," shouted a Vancouver Province headline on top of a picture of a shell-shocked looking Virtanen.
Many Province readers and devout Canucks fans leapt to Virtanen's defence with variations on the "he's just a kid" argument.
While that point holds water for Virtanen's teammates, it doesn't apply to him. Unlike his teammates, Virtanen is a professional NHL player. His entry-level contract will pay him $750,000 this season with the Canucks and he did not take a pay cut to go play with his junior peers in Finland over Christmas. In other words, he was paid handsomely by the Canucks to play for Team Canada.
The criticism is harsh but warranted.
Best of all, they are a blessing in disguise.
Team management will have a debriefing meeting with Virtanen before deciding what to do next.
Trevor Linden and Jim Benning will learn plenty about their young prospect as soon as they sit down with him and that meeting could not only decide his fate this season but perhaps his hockey career.
If Virtanen returns to Vancouver with his tail between his legs, feeling sorry for himself, angry with the unwanted attention and blaming his teammates and his coaches for what happened, then perhaps he is not the future NHL star they thought he was. But if he takes full responsibility for his poor play, points to specific examples of where he should have been better and has a fire in his eyes that he can and will improve, that will confirm both his maturity and his desire to learn how to be an elite professional hockey player.
Adversity, especially for young people competing at the highest level, either exposes their determination to overcome and excel or their inability to rise above all challenges. One way or the other, the trauma of painful and public failure defines them.
Virtanen is a goat coming out of the world junior tournament. Canucks fans will soon find out whether he's the goat that lies down and dies after a beating or the one that rises from the ground, shakes itself off and scales mountains.
