The World Juniors Summer Showcase is on!
Welcome to another week of summer!
The World Juniors Summer Showcase, a sort of staging area for the power countries of the sport (USA, Canada, Sweden, Finland) to help decide their rosters for the real thing is currently being held in Minneapolis.
For Canada, it’s the ground zero for every roster mistake they’ll make come this December and learn absolutely nothing from as they furiously scribble out good prospect after good prospect out of consideration for not attending. It’s very exciting stuff!
Thankfully for all parties involved, the rosters of these teams are all pretty damn good: James Hagens of course has already made his presence felt on Team USA, Will Moore has found a groove if not the back of the net, but they’re just the Bruins-shaped tip of the iceberg. The States came ready to party with a big old roster full of exceptional talent, and they’ll still need to make some painful cuts to keep up with the rest of the rosters once the showcase begins in earnest; a lot of the 2025 draft class is on Canada’s roster (though that may be because they don’t want the notoriously easy to jilt Hockey Canada scribbling them out of consideration for future events), Sweden’s gotten a bunch of killers from their U20 program like Viggo Björck and Nils Bartholdson together, and Finland rounds things out with the ever difficult problem of international Petteri Rimpinen locking down the net for a hardworking group of youngsters like Emil Hemming.
If you happen to have a Team USA TV account (for some reason), you can watch these games directly on their site.
Otherwise, what’s on tap? For me it’s a nice radler and some beach time when the sun hits a certain angle today, but what about you?