On December 26, 2015, the USA national junior hockey team defeated the Canadian national junior team by a score of 4-2. The game was the first for both teams in the annual World Junior Hockey Championships.

The WJC begins every year the day after Christmas and lasts until January 5 and features the best amateur hockey players in the world competing for their respective countries. Ten countries are split into two groups, Group A and Group B. Each team plays four preliminary round games against the other four teams in their respective groups. The top four teams in each group advance to the quarterfinals, the bottom two teams get relegated.

Group A consists of USA, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, and Denmark. Group B consists of Russia, Finland, Belarus, Czech Republic, and Slovakia. The quarterfinal matchups are determined by the final group standings. The highest ranked team in Group A plays the lowest ranked team in Group B, the second highest ranked team in Group A playes the second lowest ranked team in Group B, and so on and so forth.

Each country holds a selection camp during the summer before the tournament to decide who to pick to be on the team. Each team consists of the top junior players from the country. In order to be eligible to play in the 2016 WJC, a player has to be born between the year 1996 at the earliest and the year 2001 at the latest. Team Canada won the WJC last year and has won the tournament more times than any other country.

Many of the players in the tournament have been drafted by NHL teams and many others are expected to be drafted in the future. The World Juniors is a great way for hockey fans to watch the future superstars of the NHL before they make it to the league. Some notable names that have competed in the WJC in the past years include Jonathan Toews, Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby, Zach Parise, Patrick Kane, Tyler Seguin, Taylor Hall, Drew Doughty, Carey Price, Alex Gachenyuk, Seth Jones, Nathan Mackinnon, Connor McDavid, and Jack Eichel.

The World Juniors is one of the best annual international sports tournaments for any sport and I would highly recommend any hockey fan to watch some of the upcoming games that will happen this week. Most of the games can be found on NHL Network.