MINNEAPOLIS — Anger has turned to determination for the eight Canada players who attended this week’s World Junior Summer Showcase after playing at the 2025 IIHF World Junior Championship.

For forwards Gavin McKenna (2026 draft eligible), Porter Martone (Philadelphia Flyers), Berkly Catton (Seattle Kraken) and Cole Beaudoin (Utah Mammoth), defensemen Matthew Schaefer (New York Islanders) and Sam Dickinson (San Jose Sharks), and goalies Carter George (Los Angeles Kings) and Jack Ivankovic (Nashville Predators), the emotions have run the gamut in the nearly seven months since their 4-3 loss to Czechia in the quarterfinals of the 2025 WJC in Ottawa.

They have their sights set on changing the narrative for the 2026 WJC, which will be played in Minnesota from Dec. 26-Jan. 5, 2026.

“After the tournament, it was obviously anger,” said McKenna, who scored one goal in five games as Canada’s youngest player and is the favorite to be the No. 1 pick of the 2026 NHL Draft. “There was a lot of emotions. But now I think it’s, we want to do it for the country. Canada should never finish fifth place two years in a row. We’re doing it for the country. It’s not just for us. We want to be the team to win it and kind of get Canada back on track.”

Back-to-back quarterfinal-round losses are almost unprecedented for Canada. Since the tournament began in 1977, only two other times has Canada gone consecutive tournaments without a medal: fourth-place finishes in 2013 and 2014, and three straight years without a medal from 1979-81.

That latter run of futility ended with Canada winning its first World Juniors gold medal in 1982. That also happened to be the last time the tournament was played entirely in Minnesota (the 2005 WJC had games in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and Thief River Falls, Minnesota).

“Obviously we all know what happened last year, and we all weren’t very happy with the results,” said George, who had a .936 save percentage and two shutouts in four games last year but allowed the go-ahead goal to Czechia forward Adam Jecho (St. Louis Blues) with 40 seconds left in the third period in the quarterfinal loss. “So even at the summer showcase it still gets brought up, and you kind of carry that motivation to here. I know us as a group, we learn from it for sure, and moving forward be better from it. Next year it’s going to be a different story, we think.”