Hockey Canada names coaching staff for 2025 World Juniors

Hockey Canada announced Thursday its full coaching staff for its national junior team ahead of the 2025 IIHF World Junior Championship, in which the team will attempt to medal on home soil. The tournament will be back in the Canadian capital this year or next, as Ottawa has hosted it for the first time since 2009.

Former Senators head coach Dave Cameron is back at the helm for the third time. He’s gotten the Canadians to the gold medal game in both of his opportunities behind the bench thus far (2011, 2022). The first time around, he lost 5-3 to Russia but redeemed himself with a 3-2 overtime win over Finland 11 years after the tournament was rescheduled to August due to COVID-19.

Cameron’s other high-level national team experience includes serving as an assistant coach for the 2016 World Championship and an assistant at the WJC in 2009 and 2010. In league play, he’s spent the last three years as head coach of the Ottawa 67’s of the Ontario Hockey League, where he’s accumulated a 115-67-22 record and made the postseason each time.

He’ll have three assistants, the first of which is Sylvain Favreau, who’s coming off his first season as head coach of the Drummondville Voltigeurs of the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League. He guided the Voltigeurs to a QMJHL championship, their first since 2009, and won a gold medal as an assistant coach for Canada’s U18 club at the 2023 Hlinka Gretzky Cup.

Joining Favreau is Mike Johnston, who’s been the general manager and head coach of the Western Hockey League’s Portland Winterhawks on and off since 2008. Penguins fans will remember him for his brief stint behind their bench in the 2014-15 and 2015-16 campaigns — he was fired in December 2015 and promptly replaced by Mike Sullivan, who led Pittsburgh to back-to-back Stanley Cups. It’s Johnston’s first call-up to the national team since 2009, when he served as Canada’s head coach at the U18 World Juniors. He was previously a national team fixture as GM, assistant coach, and head coach at various World Championship, World Cup and Olympic events in the 1990s.

The final assistant is Chris Lazary, who’ll serve behind the national team's bench for the first time at any level in the upcoming tournament. The 42-year-old just coached the OHL’s Saginaw Spirit to a Memorial Cup as the host city, taking down the OHL champion London Knights 4-3 in the championship game after the Knights bounced them in the league’s Western Conference Final. He’s been the Spirit’s bench boss since being promoted from associate coach on Nov. 18, 2018.