Dale Hunter will be Canada’s head coach in the next world junior hockey championship, while his brother, Mark, will hear a position in management, Hockey Canada announced on Thursday.
It will be the second time that the Hunter brothers will have been teaming up Canada Junior. Dale had held the job of head coach and Mark that of managing director when Canada had won gold in the 2020 World Cup in Ostrava, Czech Republic, after defeating Russia in the final.
The Hunter brothers, as well as the former LNH Basil Mcrae man, are the owners of the London Knights, in the Ontario junior hockey league (OHL).
Dale is the president and the head coach, while Mark is the vice-president and the director general of the Knights, who won three Memorial cups and six OHL titles since they took possession of the team in 2000.
Canada has won 20 gold medals and 35 medals in total at the Junior Hockey World Cup, and it will try to bounce back after being satisfied with fifth place during the 2025 tournament in Ottawa. The United States has successfully defended its title.
The 2026 junior hockey World Cup will take place in Minneapolis and St. Paul, in Minnesota.
“Dale’s roadmap speaks of itself: three titles of the Memorial Cup, three prizes of the coach of the year in the OHL and two gold medals on the international scene. It is animated by a deep passion for this program, and we believe that it is the best candidate to allow us to win gold in Minnesota, “said the director general of the Excellence Program, Alan Millar.
Hockey Canada said that Mark Hunter will help Millar and the vice-president of high performance and hockey activities, Scott Salmond, “in the processing of files related to hockey activities, including the process of evaluating and selection of players”.
“Mark led Canada to a gold medal at the Junior World Cup in 2020 and built one of the largest concessions in the Canadian Hockey League, obtaining unrivaled successes on ice and players’ development,” said Salmond.
The Hunter brothers experienced beautiful careers in the NHL.
As a player, Dale Hunter played 1409 NHL games with the Washington Capitals, the Nordic Quebec and the Colorado Avalanche from 1980 to 1999, collecting 1020 points (323-697). It ranks second in the history of the NHL in terms of punishment with a total of 3565 minutes and is the only player to have obtained both more than 1000 points and more than 3000 minutes of punishment.
For his part, Mark Hunter played 12 seasons in the NHL (1981-1993) with the Montreal Canadian, the Blues of St. Louis, Les Flames de Calgary, the Whalers of Hartford and the Capitals, winning the Stanley Cup with the Flames in 1989.
After his retirement, he spent four seasons (1995-1997, 1998-2000) as a head coach of Sarnia, in the OHL, and a campaign (1997-1998) as head coach of the Maple Leafs of St. John’s, in the American Hockey League (AHL).