THE NATION COMES TO EDMONTON

Edmonton will host most of the best under-20 players our country has to offer starting Wednesday August 3rd. Hockey Canada has invited 47 players to this year’s camp; four goalies, 17 D-men and 26 forwards, but some of the invitees will likely be in the NHL in October, and won’t be available to help Canada try and regain the gold medal after back-to-back silver medals.

Alberta hasn’t hosted the WJC since 1995 when Red Deer did an outstanding job of welcoming the junior hockey world. Canada won gold in 1995, the third of five consecutive gold medals, and 1995 was the last tournament decided by the round robin standings. In 1996 they implemented the the 2 groups, round-robin/preliminaries and playoff format. In the 16 years of the playoff format Canada has seven golds, six silvers, three bronze and an 8th in 1998. I’m sure non-Canuck fans attribute that 8th place finish to having Roberto Luongo starting in goal, but I digress.

Earlier this week Hockey Canada added hulking D-man, Jamieson Oleksiak, who was drafted 14th overall by the Dallas Stars this past June to the roster. The late addition of Oleksiak leaves team Red with nine D-men, which isn’t ideal, but they couldn’t pass up a guy with his size. Oleksiak’s mother is American and his father is Canadian. He went to the USA junior camp last year and he was torn over which camp he should attend this year. He finally decided on Canada and Hockey Canada wisely accepted him this week.

It will be an exciting camp that wraps up with two Red and White games. The first game goes Saturday August 6th at 7:00 p.m. at Rexall Place in Edmonton, while the second game is Sunday August 7th at 7:00 p.m. in Fort McMurray. Five local players should have a large cheering section. Oilers’ draft picks Tyler Bunz and Dillon Simpson are from St. Albert and Edmonton respectively, while Joe Morrow, Mark Pysyk and Duncan Siemens are from Sherwood Park.

Here are the rosters for the Red and White games. The seven returning players have an * beside their name. 

   

Johansen and Gudbranson will lmost likely be playing for Columbus and Florida this year, so realistically they are only here to get ready for the NHL. I think Nugent-Hopkins will play in Edmonton, while Howden, Huberdeau, Couturier, Connolly, Schwartz, Strome and Scheifele might stick in the Show as well. The battle for the 13 forward positions will be the most intriguing, considering we could see as many as five or six of them stick with their NHL teams.

Visentin seems like  a lock to grab one of the goalie spots, while Pysyk and Gormley will anchor the blueline. It will be a competitive battle for the five remaining spots on the blueline between Siemens, Hamilton, Oleksiak, Gauthier-Leduc, Morrow, Beaulieu, Murphy and the highly-skilled Murray and Ceci.

All the Canadian teams, except Vancouver, will be represented next week.

CALGARY
Patrick Holland

WINNIPEG
Mark Scheifele

OTTAWA
Matt Stone
Matt Puempel

TORONTO
Greg McKegg
Stuart Percy

MONTREAL
Brendan Gallagher
Michael Bournival (Acquired from Col for Ryan O’Byrne)
Nathan Beaulieu

EDMONTON
Tyler Bunz
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins
Dillon Simpson

If you need a hockey fix to get you through the rest of the summer, I recommend grabbing some tickets for one of the Red and White games. They are highly competitive and the effort and energy is incredible.