Canada and the United States are the only teams that have not yet announced their rosters for the best-on-best tournament that starts September 17 in Toronto.
Advertisement
The eight-team tournament, which replaces the legendary Canada Cup, will feature Team Europe, Russia, Sweden, Finland, the US, Czech Republic, Canada and a North American under-23s team.
Team Europe general manager Miroslav Satan pulled from seven countries to select 16 players to the roster, including five from Slovakia and four from Denmark. USA Hockey’s worldwide council, chaired by Gavin Regan (Potsdam, N.Y.), vice president of USA Hockey, has oversight responsibilities for all US teams that compete internationally …
RUSSIA: The first 16 players named to the roster are all from the National Hockey League, so how much KHL representation will there be – beyond perhaps Alexander Radulov and Ilya Kovalchuk?
PASS OR FAIL: Team Europe’s 2016 World Cup of Hockey jerseys.
The top two finishers in each of Group A and Group B will advance to the semifinals (Sept. 24-25), where each qualifier will face an elimination game against a team from the other Group.
“It’s probably going to be one of the best tournaments that’s ever been played in hockey history”, Forsberg said via Predators.NHL.com.
The representation of younger players could expand, as well, since there are still seven slots to be filled by June 1.
The Rangers and Islanders will be sending a combined nine players to the tournament, with the Blueshirts’ Henrik Lundqvist playing for Sweden and the Isles’ John Tavares suiting up for Canada, among the marquee names.
Team USA’s roster is as follows… Josi (pictured) has been a fixture in global competitions for years.
Twelve of the 16 players selected to Canada’s initial roster won gold under Babcock at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, including goaltender Carey Price of the Montreal Canadiens, who has been out of National Hockey League action with an injury. Parise was the USA captain at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
The NHL has shutdown mid-season since the 1998 Nagano Winter Games, freeing players to represent their countries but recently owners have lost some enthusiasm for the Olympics because many players have returned injured or exhausted, thereby hurting their teams in the push towards the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Then there’s Team Finland, which is headlined by veteran goaltenders Pekka Rinne and Tuukka Rask, but includes 23-year-old Joonas Donskoi from San Jose and 21-year-old Esa Lindell from the Dallas Stars’ system.
McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers and Eichel of the Buffalo Sabres are set to be teammates on the 23-and-under Team North America as two of the 16 players selected to the initial roster.
There were lots of reminders that this was a preliminary list and that there will be three more defencemen added to the team on June 1. Weber was a significant contributor to that country’s Olympic gold medal efforts in 2010 and 2014.
Advertisement
In addition to the one of the world’s best goalies, Sweden’s got great depth on the blue line: The six defensemen named to their preliminary roster include Erik Karlsson, Victor Hedman and Niklas Hjalmarsson.
