2025 World Junior Championship: Day Three Preview

Day two marked one of the biggest days in the history of the World Junior Championship as Latvia defeated Canada in a shootout. Kazakhstan limited Sweden to just eight goals in an 8-1 loss while Finland narrowly beat Germany 3-1 and Slovakia just beat Switzerland 2-1.

Day three has just two games on the slate, let’s take a look at them

Related: A Quick Guide to the 2025 World Junior Championship

Czechia vs Kazakhstan (Noon CST)

This is the first of two games expected to be posted as a blowout. Kazakhstan just faced an 8-1 loss to the Swedish team and isn’t expecting a Cinderella story against Czechia of all teams.

This is one of the games on the slate that you watch and look at the chemistry of a team and see the overall makeup of what the country is offering. Czechia is expected to come into this game and post somewhere close to, if not, double digits against Kazakhstan.

One Player to Watch for Each Team

On the Kazakh’s roster, Vladimir Nikitin has been one of their most outstanding players in my opinion. He faced a barrage of shots against Sweden and limited the Swedes to just eight goals, which doesn’t sound impressive but when you see the stats, it ends up impressive.

For the Czechs, Adam Jiricek has continued to cement himself as a stay-at-home defenseman who can jump up into the attack if needed. He’ll be a massive contributor in what is expected to be a blowout against Kazakhstan.

USA vs Latvia (2:30 PM CST)

Latvia is fresh off their massive upset against the Canadians in the shootout. Nobody is expecting them to win against the Americans, but there has to be some doubt creeping into the minds of Team USA after seeing Team Canada fall 3-2 in the shootout against Latvia.

This will be a game that gets some extra eyes on it after Canada was knocked down a peg by Latvia. Team USA will be grinding hard, but Latvia showed their fight.

Realistically, we can expect a strong effort by the Americans, but it likely won’t be anything close to the score that we saw in the Canada-Latvia game.

One Player to Watch for Each Team

When it comes to players to watch, you can look at the four core players that Latvia has, goaltender Linards Feldbergs, defenders Peteris Bulans and Darels Uljanskis, and forward Eriks Mateiko. Ultimately, the player to watch for Latvia is their goaltender Linards Feldbergs who posted a strong effort in Latvia’s upset win over Canada. If he can squeak out a similar performance, Team USA might be in trouble if they can’t find their scoring touch.

Team USA is loaded with talent, but their success lies in a strong performance from Trey Augustine, the likely starter after the USA watched what just happened to Canada. That’s not a knock on Jack Ivankovic either, he’s a strong goaltender who got caught and it showed. If Augustine or another American goaltender finds themselves in a similar position, it could spark trouble. As I’ve said for a while now, goaltenders are voodoo and it’s tough to know what to expect from them.