The World Junior Summer Showcase got rolling over the weekend with games between two U.S. squads against Finland and Sweden.
Team Canada arrived in Plymouth, Michigan on Sunday and is going through a couple of days of practice on tap before their first game, on Tuesday against a consolidated U.S. team that has now cut its roster down to 31 players.
With 39 players on the roster, Canada is working a split squad system. Here's how the lines rolled at the first practice on Sunday:
Canucks fans will be wanting to keep a close eye on Team White, which features 2019 fifth-rounder Carson Focht centering the first line between Montreal's 2018 fourth-rounder Allan McShane and Edmonton's 2019 second-rounder Raphael Lavoie.
On defense, Jett Woo slots into the right side of the top pairing, alongside Ottawa's 2018 second-rounder Jonny Tychonick.
Dale Hunter is serving as Canada's coach for the first time ever at World Juniors. He's had a ton of success with the London Knights over the years, and in his only stint behind the bench for Team Canada, he guided the U18 team to gold at the 2013 Ivan Hlinka Memorial Tournament — a team that was captained by Aaron Ekblad and included future Canucks draft picks Jake Virtanen, Jared McCann and Carl Neill, as well as names like Brayden Point and Sam Bennett. Interestingly, the
leading scorer in that tournament was a winger named Spencer Watson, ended up being drafted in the seventh round by the L.A. Kings and has basically settled in as an ECHL player.
Hunter's love for in-your-face hockey should help Woo's chances of earning a spot on the final World Junior squad this year. It's also nice to see that he's back in action after being limited to skating on his own as he recovered from surgery at the Canucks' development camp last month.
Of course, Woo showed last year that he can do more than hit, finishing fifth in scoring among WHL defensemen with 66 points in 62 games. His development is coming along nicely, especially considering he just turned 19 last Saturday.
Focht turned 19 last February, so he just went through his second year of draft eligibility—but it is encouraging to see him get a shot in an offensive role in the middle, not shifted to the wing. I'll be very interested to see what he can deliver this week in Plymouth.
Rounding out the list of Canucks' prospects, we've got Toni Utunen, the fifth-round pick from 2018 who will be making his second World Junior appearance for Finland. Utunen won gold last year—with his lone point being the overtime goal that eliminated Canada in the quarterfinal. True to form, he went pointless in Finland's first two games in Plymouth over the weekend—a 3-2 win over USA White on Saturday, followed by a 7-1 loss to USA Blue on Sunday.
Even without top draft picks Jack Hughes and Kaapo Kakko—and without Vancouver second-rounder Nils Hoglander, who elected to stay back in Sweden—this year's Summer Showcase is packed with star power. Twenty of this year's 31 first-round draft picks are suiting up for their countries, and the event also offers a tantalizing look at some of the top prospects for the 2020 draft, including Canada's Alexis Lafreniere, Finland's Anton Lundell and Sweden's wunderkinds Lucas Raymond and Alexander Holtz.
Here's the wider-ranging look at the event that I wrote earlier:
TV for Canada's game against the U.S. on Tuesday is subscription only, via the Hockey TV website. TSN and NHL Network will broadcast the last three days of the event, starting Wednesday.
A couple of other notes from around the league to wrap up today:
• Remember earlier in the spring, when there was talk that Jacob Markstrom would be signed to a contract extension on July 1? With his breakout performance last season, Markstrom was great value at just $3.67 million—and he'll make the same next season as he heads toward unrestricted free agency.
With all their offseason wheeling and dealing, I'm not surprised that a Markstrom extension got put on the back burner—and it will be interesting to see how Thatcher Demko progresses in his first full NHL season this year. But with Sergei Bobrovsky's $10 million-a-year free-agent deal and now a $9.5 million-a-year extension for Andrei Vasilevskiy in Tampa Bay, it seems like inflation has just hit the goalie market, hard. I wonder how that'll impact talks to keep Markstrom in Vancouver?
• The Nikita Gusev acquisition fantasy is over. After dealing David Clarkson's contract to Toronto last week, George McPhee is showing a trend toward making trades outside of his own conference. Still without enough cap space to sign Gusev, McPhee dealt the Russian sniper to New Jersey on Monday in exchange for second and third-round draft picks. The Devils subsequently signed the 27-year-old to a two-year deal with a cap hit of $4.5 million per season.
That's another nice acquisition for Ray Shero, as the arms race continues to heat up between the Devils and the Rangers. This sentence is so odd, I'm not sure I've ever typed it before: I think New Jersey's going to be a very fun team to watch this year!
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