The 1998 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships (1998 WJHC) were held in Helsinki and Hameenlinna, Finland. The championships began on December 25, 1997 and finished on January 3, 1998. Home team Finland was the winner, defeating Russia 2-1 in the gold medal game, thanks to the goaltending of Mika Noronen and the overtime heroics of Niklas Hagman. Switzerland defeated the Czech Republic 4-3 to capture the bronze medal, their first and only medal in the World Junior Ice Hockey Championships.
Also worth noting was that Canada had its five year title streak broken with its worst placing to date (8th). Canada would miss out on gold seven years in a row before beginning their 2005-2009 streak of five straight championships. It was the only tournament from 1993 to 2012 in which Canada failed to medal.
This tournament attracted 139,680 fans to 34 games for an average of 4,108 per game. As of 2013, it was the best-attended World Junior Championship ever held in Europe.
Famous quotes containing the words world, junior and/or ice:
“The world is filled with the proverbs and acts and winkings of a base prudence, which is a devotion to matter, as if we possessed no other faculties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear; a prudence which adores the Rule of Three, which never subscribes, which never gives, which seldom lends, and asks but one question of any project,—Will it bake bread?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The junior senator from Wisconsin, by his reckless charges, has so preyed upon the fears and hatreds and prejudices of the American people that he has started a prairie fire which neither he nor anyone else may be able to control.”
—J. William Fulbright (b. 1905)
“Adjoining a refreshment stand ... is a small frame ice house ... with a whitewashed advertisement on its brown front stating, simply, “Ice. Glory to Jesus.” The proprietor of the establishment is a religious man who has seized the opportunity to broadcast his business and his faith at the same time.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)