Raiders captain Justice Christensen will represent Canada at the World Ball Hockey Championships starting July 2 in Slovakia. (Mark Peterson/Prince Albert Raiders)

By Nick Nielsen

From Ice Skates to Running Shoes

Captain Christensen set to represent Canada at World Ball Hockey Championships

May 26, 2025 | 1:27 PM

While Raiders fans have come to love the no-nonsense, hard hitting style of play captain Justice Christensen has become known for on the ice, he’s now getting set to take his talents to the court now as a member of Team Canada at the World Ball Hockey Championships in Poprad, Slovakia.

It’s an opportunity that came out of nowhere a little bit for Christensen. Last season his Raiders teammate, Max Hildebrand, invited Christensen to play on a team based out of Saskatoon in a tournament in Edmonton last year, and Christensen impressed on the court enough to be put on watch by Canada Ball Hockey.

“The tournament was in Edmonton, so I drove up and met the team there and it was. That was my first time ever playing ball hockey. I just bought like the shin pads and stuff for it, went up there, and after like the third game, one of the team scouts approached me and asked me ‘how long you been playing?’ things like that, I told them actually this is my third game playing and he’s like, ‘oh wow, you’re a good player. If you hear from us in the next couple months, that’s what it’s about.'”

For Christensen it serves as his first opportunity to wear the maple leaf sweater to represent his country, but it also serves as a unique opportunity to face some real competition in the off season from the ice. Christensen is known for an aggressive, hard hitting style of play on skates, and while there aren’t any open ice hits in ball hockey, that aggressive style of play will still serve him well on the court.

“It’s actually a lot rougher than it looks and everyone’s just a lot more sturdy because they’re on their feet. So you definitely bang bodies pretty good, but it’s nothing [like] open ice hits and things like that. So I mean, you still play hard and it’s fun and aggressive, but it’s just not quite as intense as ice hockey.”

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The chance to go play in Poprad, Slovakia is also giving a unique opportunity. A lot of the young and foreign players that have come to Prince Albert have said the Christensen is one of the first guys to show them around Prince Albert and the team.

Now when he heads off to Slovakia, Christensen will be the tourist while one of his former teammates gets to show him around the area.

“I was talking to Krzyzstof Macias and he said he lives about two hours away from from Poprad where the where the tournament is held and he said he was going to come down and see me when I’m there. So that’ll be exciting, but as far as asking them about what to expect, I was in Croatia, which is it’s kind of the same area and it was like a dream spot, a dream destination. It was pretty nice. So I kind of know what I’m expecting, but being there not on vacation would be a little bit different for sure.”

Team Canada is taking players from six different Canadian provinces, three from Alberta, six from B.C., one from Manitoba, four from Newfoundland, seven from Ontario, and finally one from Saskatchewan. That one player from Saskatchewan, Rylan Pearce who plays for the Everett Silvertips, is the only one Christensen has crossed paths with before.

To get ready for the tournament, Christensen is mostly left on his own doing his usual summer training routine to get ready for the ice hockey season. The team won’t come together to practice for the first time until they head to Toronto on June 28. There they’ll practice together for a few days before heading to Slovakia to start the tournament on July 2 against Czechia.