Good for the kids on Team Canada that struck gold for a fifth straight year at the World Junior Hockey Championship. But shame on the rest of us who’ve turned that tournament into a complete circus. These are teenagers and junior hockey players. Sure, they’re elite athletes for their age group, but they remain junior hockey players, just kids really. And yet Hockey Canada and TSN have turned them into absolute cash cows convincing us all that they are heroes because they beat the Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, and Germany by a combined score of 28-2 in the first three games of the tournament. Sure, there was some drama in the comeback win against the Americans on New Year’s Eve and the win over Russia in the semi-final was certainly stirring. But despite being pounded over the head by the TSN promotion department for the 48 hours leading up to Monday’s gold medal game with Sweden, last night’s game was a dud.

The fact the tournament is played in Canada almost every year should tell you the value the rest of the world places on an event like this one. Quickly, tell me who’s won the past five world junior baseball or basketball championships? You don’t know because you don’t care. And clearly nor do the television networks in this country. How come TSN doesn’t devote hours and hours of coverage to junior hockey during the regular season? Why doesn’t TSN do more to promote any amateur athletics in this country? Because that stuff doesn’t sell. The only reason the World Juniors have those shams disguised as preliminary round games is to allow TSN more games to televise (providing programming and advertising revenue) and give tournament organizers more tickets to sell. There is nothing—absolutely nothing—sporting about Canada beating the poor Kazaks, whose team was comprised of 20 of the 30 eligible players they could round up in that country, 15-0.

Somehow we’ve all been brainwashed in this country that the World Junior Hockey Championship is a much bigger deal that it really is. Again, good for the players involved. They did what they had to do to beat the competition for their age group that stood in front of them. But hero worship? C’mon. Where is your perspective, people? As a country we went through the first week of the Beijing Olympics last summer wondering why our athletes couldn’t compete on the world stage. Maybe it’s because we go ga-ga over the World Junior hockey team and don’t give a second thought to all the other tremendous athletes out there holding down jobs while trying to squeeze in training to compete at the international level and achieve results.

Sure everybody loves a winner. But are we so starved for things to get excited about in this country that we need to ride the coat tails of these teenagers? This thing has gotten so out of hand it’s ridiculous.

Guess what? Next year’s tournament is in Regina and Saskatoon. Word on the street is that Canada’s the early favourite. Imagine that.