By this time next year, we’ll be settling into a period of anticipation for Toronto’s first attempt to host — OK, half-host — the world junior hockey championship in 2015.

It could end up being a pivotal event in the history of this city, or at the very least in this city’s ability to demonstrate it can serve effectively and profitably as the host of significant international events.

Originally, of course, the 2015 Pan Am Games were supposed to be the signature event that would show the world Toronto could be something more than just a town that adores the Maple Leafs.

It was four years ago in Guadalajara, Mexico that Toronto won the right to host the Pan Ams. David Miller was the mayor, Dalton McGuinty was the premier and the winning bid came in at $2.4 billion.

We’d twice failed to land the Olympics, and getting this second-tier (third-tier?) competition seemed like an entry-level opportunity for a city with little history in successfully hosting much of anything.

Some time after that came Hockey Canada’s announcement that Toronto and Montreal would share the world juniors in ’15, and then again in ’17, and along the way it has also become apparent that the Pan Am Games organization is limping along somewhere between uncertainty and disarray.

This week, Pan Am organizing committee CEO Ian Troop was sacked, raising all kinds of new questions about expenses, costs, salaries and just how prepared the GTA is to host this 51-sport event.

To say the public’s level of awareness of this event is low would be an understatement. People notice the construction and the cranes, but don’t necessarily connect them to a major international sports competition coming this way.

This may all be fixable over the next 19 months with new leadership in place, or we may have a disaster on our hands by the summer of ’15.

That brings us back to the world juniors, which will take place six months before a starting gun is fired in the Pan Ams.

Suddenly, the junior hockey event is saddled with extra importance.

If it’s a roaring success, then the impact of a fouled-up Pan Am Games on Toronto’s reputation as a city capable of hosting major events would be somewhat diminished.

But if the junior event is received in the same lukewarm, “meh” fashion as was, say, the 2011 Memorial Cup in Mississauga, then following up with a fumbled Pan Am Games could deliver a double blow to the city’s prestige that might take decades to recover from.

No pressure, boys.

Hopes are high, of course, that Toronto will passionately embrace the world juniors in the same excited bear hug as have Vancouver, Ottawa, Saskatoon, Calgary and Edmonton in recent years.

And maybe that’s what will happen.

For the 2015 event, Toronto will host the preliminary group that doesn’t include Canada, which means locals could have to pay significant ticket prices to see the Swiss take on the Slovaks, or Russia face Finland.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Toronto then gets the medal round, and presumably some Canada games, but not until then. So there are distinct challenges ahead for those planning the 2015 world juniors here in the GTA. It’s not necessarily the slam dunk some assume it will be.

Indeed, it could serve the interests of the Toronto/Montreal WJC for the junior nats not to win gold this year in Malmo, Sweden, which would then make it five years without gold when the tournament heads back to North America.

Remember, Canada went seven years without gold from 1998 to 2004. For the 2005 championships, Canadians turned Grand Forks, N.D. into a de facto home tournament by pouring across the border in waves, creating an energy that helped a lockout-loaded Canadian squad win the gold.

Sometimes a little drought goes a long way to regenerate emotions for this tournament, which is followed far more closely in Canada than in any of the other participating countries.

Imagine Canada going for its first gold in five years at the Air Canada Centre in January 2015.

Yep, that would create a buzz.

A buzz that could carry the GTA right through until summer, and maybe even give a little national spirit boost to the Pan Am Games.

Look, you’re not going to read here about the need for Toronto to be “put on the map” by hosting such events. But the fact is that we’ve already got these competitions on the way, and with all the infamy and bad publicity attracted in recent times by our absurd chief magistrate, it would serve nobody in these parts any good if one or both of the world juniors and Pan Ams were to flop.

Clearly, the chances are better for the world juniors to be successful, which makes it a very good thing that event comes first.

It better work. Right now, betting on the Pan Am Games looks dicey, at best.