Things may have been getting a little dull around here, now that Development Camp is well and truly behind us, and the Flyers seem to have wrapped up all of their business and closed up shop for the summer, but we have a little blip of action coming up to tide us over until things start to really ramp up again.
The annual World Junior Summer Showcase is set to kick off this afternoon, hosted — as a bit of a changeup from its usual site at USA Hockey headquarters in Plymouth, Michigan — at the University of Minnesota’s Ridder Arena. Over the next week, we’ll see representatives from the American, Canadian, Finnish, and Swedish programs facing off in some game action, as the management groups of these national teams begin to take their notes and begin to think about how they want to construct their teams for the big tournament in December. It’s still very early in the process, but there’s a lot of intrigue at work here — particularly because the Flyers will be so well represented.
Between the four national teams, the Flyers have seven prospects in the mix, with the added likelihood of an eight coming into play down the line a bit, when the main camps for the World Juniors come around. You can peruse the full rosters here, but here’s the breakdown of the Flyers’ prospect group by team:
USA White
Jack Murtagh
Shane Vansaghi
Finland
Heikki Ruohonen
Max Westergard
Sweden
Jack Berglund
Canada
Porter Martone
Spencer Gill
Altogether, it’s a nice spread of prospects spread out throughout these four teams. Along with these seven set to compete, Jett Luchanko also got an invitation to this tournament, but he had to decline, as it would seem that the groin issue that held him out of the Flyers’ Development Camp still has him not quite ready to return to game action. All indications are that he’ll be ready for camp, so nothing to worry about there, and what’s more, after having represented Canada in last year’s World Junior Championship, he’s as close to a lock for this year’s roster, and one can’t imagine that the folks over at Hockey Canada are feeling particularly pressed to get further impressions of him. The same will more or less be the case for players like Ruohonen and Berglund, who are also returnees from last year’s teams, but for all of Murtagh, Vansaghi, Westergard, Gill, and Martone, they’ll be beginning their own campaigns to earn their first spots on the U20 teams this week.
The tournament will kick off this afternoon with a pair of games, and continue through the week. The full schedule is below (all times in Eastern Time).
Sunday, July 27
2:00 – USA White vs. Finland
5:30 – USA Blue vs. Sweden
Monday, July 28
2:00 – Finland vs. USA Blue
5:30 – Sweden vs. USA White
Tuesday, July 29
5:30 – Canada Red vs. Canada White
Wednesday, July 20
2:00 – Sweden vs. USA
5:30 – Canada vs. Finland
Friday, August 1
2:00 – Canada vs. Sweden
5:30 – Finland vs. USA
Sunday, August 3
2:00 – Sweden vs. Finland
5:30 – USA vs. Canada
The Finns and the Swedes have brought their more pared down rosters with them from the jump, but we’ll see both the American and Canadian teams beginning with two split squads before trimming down to one main team ahead of Wednesday’s slate of action, for the Americans after they’ve played two games apiece, and for the Canadians, after Tuesday’s scrimmage.
It’s worth remembering that this tournament will just run as a round robin format, and no medals will be handed out this time around. And this is because, as much as we can expect the players to bring full intensity and take these rivalry games seriously, the overall results of this tournament don’t matter so much as the impressions that the players make on an individual basis. This camp is all about the players getting comfortable with potential team and linemates, and the management group beginning to do some evaluations. This camp won’t make or break anyone — the stakes won’t really rise until the main camps in the winter — but first impressions matter for the teams, and for us more casual viewers, it will be interesting to see how these largely shiny new prospects will show against some of the very best players in their age group. There always seem to be some interesting surprises in these summer tournaments, and it will be interesting, in turn, to see how this one plays out.