Quesnel’s Mitch Love, an assistant coach for Canada at the World Junior Hockey Championships, now has a silver medal to go along with the gold he got last year.
Besides the obvious, finishing second instead of number one, Love says the tournament was obviously a lot different this year…
“It was quite a bit different, obviously with the pandemic that everybody is faced with here in the world over the last almost year now.  You know there was some unique circumstances in terms of living 51 days in a hotel from Red Deer to Edmonton, and semi-daily COVID tests and making sure the environment was safe for the athletes and staff to participate, you know it was quite unique.”
Love says it was still hockey once they got on the ice though and he says unfortunately they came up one win short.
We asked Love about a third trip to the World Juniors…
“Until Hockey Canada tells me that my time has passed and it’s time to move onto some different coaches on the coaching staff I’d loved to be involved.  Obviously finishing second this year leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, I would love to lead our country at some point to a gold medal again, and my plan is to try to stay involved with the program as long as I can.”
Love worked with the defense this year…
“This year a little bit different in the sense that we were allowed to keep eight defenseman instead of your traditional seven because of the COVID protocols and restrictions, so we had one player, he played 5 minutes of ice time one game, and never played again the rest of the tournament.  It just shows the sacrifice that these kids are willing to put for an opportunity to wear that Canadian flag on their jersey and represent our country.”
The team didn’t allow a single even strength goal until allowing one in the gold medal game.
After talking with us, Love wanted to make sure that he thanked all of the Quesnel residents he heard from for their support…
“I received text messages, e-mails, through social media, it’s tremendous.  I haven’t lived in Quesnel for a long time but to see the people that are so supportive of my career and those kids and what they went through for the World Juniors, that is really special to me and my family.”