Three competitions decide what Canadian screens show in December, and only one of them is the NHL. The World Junior Championship returns to Canadian ice from 26 December to 5 January, split between Rogers Place in Edmonton, which holds 18,347, and the Marchant Crane Centrium in Red Deer, which holds 7,111. It is the twentieth time the country has hosted. Canada are in Group B in Edmonton alongside Czechia, Switzerland, Latvia and Norway, and open against Switzerland on 26 December at 17:00 local time. The gold medal game is on 5 January.

What Is Actually At Stake

Canada have not won this tournament since 2023 and took bronze last year. A home tournament with a three-year gap behind it is a different kind of pressure from a home tournament following a win, and the roster news matters more than usual: last year the selection camp list landed on 8 December with camp starting on 12 December, so the squad becomes real in the second week of the month.

Where To Watch

TSN holds the Canadian rights to the World Juniors and shows every Canadian game plus the medal rounds, with RDS carrying the French feed. Because both venues are in Alberta, start times favour the whole country rather than the usual European compromise, and the Boxing Day opener goes at 17:00 Mountain. Operators that stream hockey in-play are marked in the table below; rights are country-bound, so availability is shown for your own location rather than in general.

The Grey Cup And New Year’s Eve

The 113th Grey Cup was played on 15 November in Calgary — the earliest date in the game’s history — with Montreal meeting Edmonton, and Edmonton arriving on a first West title since 2015. Six weeks later the NHL takes its game outdoors for the 2027 Discover Winter Classic: Colorado at Utah on 31 December at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City, the first outdoor NHL game in Utah. That slots neatly between the World Junior group stage and the quarter-finals, which is useful if you want hockey on New Year’s Eve without following a bracket.

Two Names In The News This Week

Carey Price. The goaltender was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto on 9 November as part of the 2026 class, alongside Patrice Bergeron, Pekka Rinne, Keith Tkachuk and Cindy Curley. The following night the Canadiens added him to their ring of honour at the Bell Centre, and the crowd applauded for close to four minutes. Price, now 39, played his entire fifteen-year career in Montreal after being drafted fifth overall in 2005 and remains the franchise record holder with 361 wins. He became the 62nd member of the organisation to enter the Hall.

Edmonton and Red Deer. Hockey Canada confirmed the two Alberta venues as hosts, which puts the tournament in a province where junior hockey sells out without a national team attached. Red Deer handles the second group; Edmonton takes Canada’s games, both semi-finals and the final.

What To Expect

The shape of the Canadian December is unusual this year because the Grey Cup came and went in mid-November, leaving a clear month before the hockey starts. That makes the first three weeks of December quiet by Canadian standards and the last ten days extremely busy: a tournament, an outdoor game and a full NHL schedule inside the same stretch. Anyone planning around it should treat 26 December, not 1 December, as the start of the season’s real viewing.