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Five Devils prospects to participate in World Junior Summer Showcase |
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The New Jersey Devils will be well represented when the World Junior Summer Showcase begins this Friday.
Forwards Michael McLeod (CAN), Joey Anderson (USA), Jesper Bratt (SWE), Jesper Boqvist (SWE) and Aarne Talvitie (FIN) have all been invited to participate in the four-team tournament.
The summer rosters are naturally bigger than the ones you'll see when the World Juniors begin in December -- this is a way to evaluate players on the radar in a competitive environment -- but it's obviously encouraging the Devils have a handful of players scheduled to play.
This news is somewhat telling about where the prospect system is at right now, in both a positive and negative way.
On one hand, it's great to have five players participating, especially up front. For years the Devils have lacked speed and skill at forward and this a clear sign there's more help on the way (even beyond Nico Hischier and recent graduates like Pavel Zacha and John Quenneville).
On the other hand, the Devils' biggest organizational need is on defense and they don't have a defenseman slated to participate.
They do have a couple promising prospects in the system -- Yegor Rykov and Reilly Walsh come to mind -- but, overall, they're pretty shallow and there isn't a blue chipper to help make up for it.
There are clearly still some holes in the system but, even so, this is a sign progress has been made since Ray Shero and his staff took over.
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