What to watch this weekend and over the holidays

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Some sports to brighten the season:World junior hockey championship Last year in Sweden, Canada's three-peat hopes came to a crashing halt with a quarterfinal loss to the Czech Republic. This time, the Canadians are back on home ice in Ottawa, and they're slight favourites to reclaim the title over the defending champion United States. Watch for Canada's Gavin McKenna, a slick forward for the Medicine Hat Tigers who leads the WHL in scoring and would probably be the No. 1 pick in the upcoming NHL draft if he was old enough. The Whitehorse native just turned 17 today, so he'll have to wait til 2026. Canada's first game is on Boxing Day against Finland, followed by matchups with Latvia on Dec. 27 and Germany on Dec. 29 (all starting at 7:30 p.m. ET) before a New Year's Eve showdown against the U.S. to wrap up the group stage. If you missed yesterday's newsletter, here's our world juniors primer.

WATCH l CBC Sports previews what Canadians should watch over the weekend:

Football The expanded 12-team College Football Playoff kicks off tonight at 8 p.m. ET at Notre Dame Stadium, where the seventh-ranked Fighting Irish take on No. 10 Indiana. The Hoosiers were the most surprising team in the country this season. And they're quarterbacked by a Canadian, Kurtis Rourke, which is a rarity in big-time college football. The younger brother of CFL QB Nathan Rourke has thrown 27 touchdown passes and just four interceptions this year. We had more on Kurtis in Wednesday's newsletter.  The other three first-round games take place Saturday: No. 11 SMU vs. No. 6 Penn State at 12 p.m. ET, No. 12 Clemson vs. No. 5 Texas at 4 p.m. ET and No. 9 Tennessee vs. No. 8 Ohio State at 8 p.m. ET. Top-ranked Oregon, No. 2 Georgia, No. 3 Boise State and No. 4 Arizona State are enjoying byes before slotting in for the quarterfinals on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Saturday also features a pair of marquee NFL matchups. AFC South leader Houston visits Super Bowl champion Kansas City at 1 p.m. ET before Pittsburgh meets Baltimore at 4:30 p.m. ET in a game that will help decide the AFC North. Those same four playoff-bound teams will be back in action on Christmas Day, when K.C. faces Pittsburgh at 1 p.m. ET and Baltimore takes on Houston at 4:30 p.m. ET.Basketball With the NFL now hellbent on taking over Christmas (even when it falls on a Wednesday), the day no longer belongs to the NBA. But a nationally televised quintuple-header is still scheduled for Dec. 25, starting with Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs vs. the New York Knicks at noon ET and ending with MVP Nikola Jokic and Canadian Jamal Murray's Denver Nuggets vs. Kevin Durant's Phoenix Suns at 10:30 p.m. ET. There's also a great matchup tonight as the league-leading Cleveland Cavaliers host the Milwaukee Bucks, who won the NBA Cup on Tuesday night. In women's college basketball, fourth-ranked UConn's Paige Bueckers — the top prospect for next year's WNBA draft — will go head-to-head with sophomore star JuJu Watkins of No. 7 USC on Saturday at 8 p.m. ET.

Olympic sports Lindsey Vonn launches her comeback this weekend in St. Moritz, Switzerland, where she'll compete in a pair of World Cup super-G races on Saturday and Sunday. Vonn retired from alpine skiing almost six years ago as the all-time leader in women's World Cup wins. Her record has since been broken by fellow American Mikaela Shiffrin, but Vonn remains one of the biggest names in the sport, so there's a lot of excitement around her return at the age of 40. Assuming her body holds up (a titanium knee is just one of the scary things on her medical chart after countless high-speed crashes over the years) the 2010 Olympic downhill champ is hoping to make a run at the 2026 Winter Games in Italy. In men's alpine, Canada's Cameron Alexander tied for fifth and Jack Crawford was 13th in today's men's super-G in Val Gardena, Italy. They'll race the downhill on Saturday before heading to a different Italian venue for another set of men's speed events next weekend. Canadian moguls star Mikaël Kingsbury took silver in today's men's competition in Georgia, snapping his five-event win streak dating back to last season. Kingsbury remains atop the men's World Cup standings and will go for his record-extending 93rd career victory in Saturday's dual moguls — his final event of the calendar year. Canadian ski cross star Marielle Thompson finally cooled off today, finishing 13th in Italy after winning two gold and a bronze in the first three World Cup races. For the first time this season, no Canadians reached the podium in either the women's or men's event. But Thompson and company can still end their calendar year on a high note when they return to the same venue for another set of races on Saturday.  CBC Sports is live-streaming all of the winter Olympic sports events listed above. Here's the full schedule.