For two decades as a National Hockey League player, Dale Hunter of Petrolia, Ontario was considered one of the National Hockey League’s most well known agitators. He combined offensive prowess and physical play. Hunter had 1020 points and 3565 penalty minutes over 1407 regular season games.
In the postseason, Hunter will be remembered for his slash on Pierre Turgeon of the New York Islanders in the 1993 Patrick Division Semifinals, while Turgeon was celebrating a goal. As a result, Hunter was suspended 21 games. It was one of Gary Bettman’s first major decisions he made as the NHL Commissioner.
Over the last quarter of a century, Hunter has made a name for himself as one of the most successful Canadian junior hockey coaches of all-time. He has guided the London Knights to three Memorial Cups over the last three decades, including this year as the Knights defeated the Medicine Hat Tigers 4-1 in Rimouski, Quebec.
Hockey Canada recognized just how much of an asset Hunter can be behind the bench. On Thursday, he was named the head coach of Team Canada for the 2026 International Ice Hockey Federation World Junior Men’s Hockey Championship. Games will be taking place at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul (home of the NHL’s Minnesota Wild) and the 3M Arena at Mariucci in Minneapolis (home of the Minnesota Golden Gophers of the National Collegiate Athletic Association). This will be the first time since 1982 that Minnesota has hosted the World Junior Men’s Hockey Championship. This was also the first time that Canada ever won the gold medal. They had a record of six wins and one draw for 13 points. Canada’s top player was goaltender Mike Moffat of Galt, Ontario.
Hunter was the Canadian coach when Canada won the World Juniors in 2020 in Ostrava, Czech Republic. In the gold medal game, Canada beat Russia by a score of 4-3.
In bringing in Hunter as the head coach, Canada is trying to restore glory. The last two World Junior Hockey Championships have been a disaster for the Canadian team. While the 2024 squad played adequate (had a respectable record of three wins and one loss in the round robin before losing to Czechia 3-2 in the quarterfinals), the 2025 Canadian National Junior Team was the most inept Canadian junior squad from an offensive standpoint that has ever been assembled in the history of the tournament. Canada was simply horrendous in a 3-2 shootout loss to Latvia, and were outplayed significantly in losses to the United States and Czechia.
