It’s that time of the year when various media outlets and bloggers start cobbling together their lists for players, teams and moments of the year. CBC Sports is no different, coming up with their recent Team of the Year. They’ll follow up with the Canadian Athlete of the Year, Canadian Sports Story of the Year, most influential person in sports, and Canadian Player of the Decade later on.

For the time being, however, the category generating a whole slew of discussion is the Team of the Year. And, rightly or wrongly, CBC has named the 2009 world junior hockey team as their Team of the Year.

The case here is a simple one, if you really think about it. The junior squad captured Canada’s fifth straight World Junior Championship this past January, furthering Canada’s legacy in the tournament. But how much of an accomplishment is that proving to be, anyway?

In other words, is Canada’s dominance in the World Junior Championships a foregone conclusion? Is it even really that big of a deal anymore?

The 2009 team featured the likes of John Tavares on the ice and Pat Quinn behind the bench, formulating the perfect Canadian hockey combination to almost guarantee success.

When facing off against the Russians, the Canadians looked a little shaky. They coughed up leads throughout the game and eventually it came down to a shootout, leaving the overachieving Canadian Juniors in a remarkably precarious position. Still, Tavares put it all home in scoring the winner and the Canadians headed off to face the Swedish team in the finals.

Among the choices offered on the CBC website, there’s hardly a better option. The Pittsburgh Penguins and Toronto Maple Leafs also represent the hockey world, with the latter choice being one of the more perplexing ones. Also in tow were the Montreal Alouettes and the Los Angeles Lakers.

Obviously this whole poll thing has got me thinking about what my own selections for sports team of the year would be. I have to like the Penguins (in fact the Pens got my vote on the CBC poll), but the Chicago Blackhawks also received consideration for their excellent year. They were a team that really came out of the basement and proved to be an exciting, forceful team on the ice. With an array of young, exhilarating players, it was hard to imagine not considering the Blackhawks for Team of the Year honours.

What are some other teams deserving of mention from 2009?

Posted by Jordan Richardson.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 10:05 pm and is filed under NHL, NHL Notes, Non-NHL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.