Canada gets chills over facing United States outdoors at WJC

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- Dillon Dube admittedly had a case of the shivers.

And it had nothing to do with the bone-chilling cold that greeted the Canada captain and his teammates as they marched out of the tunnel toward the rink at New Era Field on Thursday afternoon.
The temperatures were raw, and so was the excitement of these kids. That was the real reason Dube's 19-year-old body was quivering.
And he wasn't alone in that.
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For months, the teenagers on the United States and Canada teams had Friday circled on the calendar. That is when they will face each other at the home of the NFL's Buffalo Bills in Group A play at the 2018 IIHF World Junior Championship (3 p.m. ET; NHLN, TSN, RDS).
It's one thing to anticipate playing in the first outdoor game in the event's history. But until that precious moment arrives when you first step onto such a grand stage, you never really know what it feels like.

Dube has an idea now.
"I think walking out there when we first got to the rink today, I got shivers," the forward said after practice. "I've never really had that feeling before where I just got excitement. I didn't really know what to do with myself."
At one point, he squinted through the blinding sunlight looking for dad Paris and mom Suzy in the upper part of the stadium. He identified two specks he thought might be them.
Or not.
"I saw my parents up in probably the fourth deck up there. I could barely see them. Well, I don't really know if it was them," he said with a chuckle.
"Just playing in an atmosphere like this is incredible. There's no words to describe it. I'm excited for the game tomorrow and it's going to be tough sleeping tonight. I'm really looking forward to it."
It's not just an opportunity to play outdoors, it is the chance to cleanse the memory of the 5-4 shootout loss to the Americans in the gold-medal game in January. And there certainly will be no shortage of eyeballs watching them attempt to do it.
"It's definitely going to be a spectacle," USA Hockey spokesman and organizing committee member Dave Fischer said.
In a statement Thursday, tournament officials said that the game is expected to break the World Juniors single-game attendance record with a crowd of more than 40,000. The record was set Jan. 5, 2009, in Ottawa, where Canada and Sweden played the gold-medal game in front of 20,380 fans.
Temperatures between 15 and 20 degrees are expected for the game Friday. Organizers had contemplated moving the game indoors to KeyBank Center in Buffalo, where the majority of the tournament is taking place, in the event of inclement weather, but the decision was made Thursday to forge ahead with the original plans.
"I've been monitoring the weather forecast for the past three weeks, so believe me, I was very much aware of what was going on down there," Mike Gilbert, chairman of the host organizing committee, said of Erie, Pennsylvania, which is 90 miles from Buffalo and has been buried by more than 65 inches of snow this week. "Fortunately, they seemed to have been pretty accurate about our forecast for the game up here all along.
"It's going to be exciting."
Locals in Orchard Park had their own snow woes to deal with on Dec. 10 when a lake-effect blizzard turned the Bills-Indianapolis Colts game at New Era Field into a winter wonderland. Remnants of that dumping can be seen at the nearby Big Tree Inn, where the parking lot is lined with snowbanks, some several feet high.
Once a popular meeting spot for members of the 1990s Bills teams, the Big Tree Inn is usually buzzing with hungry and thirsty tailgaters and frolickers for NFL games, regardless of the conditions outside. Will World Juniors revelers be willing to brave the elements?
"It's going to be cold, but we've already seen a significant increase in activity," Danny DeMarco, owner of the Big Tree Inn, said Thursday afternoon.
"When [the] Pittsburgh (Penguins) and the (Buffalo) Sabres played at the stadium 10 years ago (in the 2008 NHL Winter Classic), there were lots of tailgaters. We had a lot of people from Pittsburgh drive up."
It will be interesting to see if Canadians do the same Friday, with Fort Erie, Ontario, a 25-minute drive away.
Asked if he hopes it snows Friday, Canada goaltender Carter Hart said, "I don't know, maybe. I think it'd be kind of cool to have some snow fall kind of like the old days when you're on the rink as a kid."
Playing in the great outdoors is nothing new to Hart. He grew up just outside Edmonton in Sherwood Park, Alberta, where he spent countless hours playing on the backyard rink belonging to the parents of his buddy Sam Steel.

"I got on that outdoor rink with Sammy like a million times probably mostly skating with him out there," said Hart, who said Steel's dad actually had a Zamboni.
For a backyard rink? A full-sized one?
"Yep. Teams would even have practices there," he said with a laugh.
Hart and Steel have come a long way from those days. Steel, a forward, is a Canada teammate. On Friday, they'll be playing outside again in front of a much bigger audience.
Hart, like his teammates, can only imagine what it will feel like. As he walked toward the tunnel after practice Thursday, he looked up at the stands, then seemed to shiver before disappearing into the dressing room.
Like we said, it wasn't from the cold.