Canadian roster named

Hockey Canada named the 37 players invited to the World Junior try out camp this morning. You can find the full roster here.

Of the 37 invitees, there are 11 WHLers plus one WHL alumnus. Those 12 players make up 1 of 4 goaltenders invited, 5 of 12 defencemen, and 6 of 21 forwards.

In net, only four goalies invited means three of them are going to make the team, there's only going to be one cut. Three of the invitees here are 19 and one 18 year old so if the team wants to be forward-looking then I would expect Jake Paterson (the 18 year old) to make the team for sure since he can play again next year. Even if he's only the third goalie this year, he can soak up the experience. If you put Paterson on the team, plus most people seem to think Malcolm Subban is a lock for the team as well, then that means that the WHL's one goalie in camp, the Edmonton Oil Kings' Laurent Brossoit, is in a battle with OHL Owen Sound goalie Jordan Binnington for the remaining spot.

On defence, once you assure spots to the two returning defencemen (the OHL's Dougie Hamilton and Scott Harrington), there are 10 players - including the five WHLers - competing for 5 spots. Of the WHL guys, Morgan Rielly should be considered a shoo-in for a spot; there may not be a better defenceman in the CHL this year than Rielly. He and Hamilton would look pretty good on the top pair and QB'ing the powerplay.

Wotherspoon and Reinhart bring more of a defence-first approach to the team and while I'm not an expert on the OHL or QMJHL players invited, their point totals would seem to indicate that many of them are not in that category. Returnee Harrington is going to be one of Canada's shutdown defence pair (as he was last year) and Wotherspoon and Reinhart could be contenders to join him on that pair.

Dumba is a versatile player who can play a lot of roles - I can see him as the 7th defenceman who can jump up and play forward in the event of injury problems up front, for example. Dumba has been troubled with undisciplined play sometimes in the past (though he seems to have cleaned that up a bit this year) which cannot surface in World Junior games, so the coaching staff will have to be confident that he can keep it clean if he's going to make the team.

Pouliot I think might be a good 2nd pair guy, an all-around guy who can work on the 2nd PP unit and be responsible in his own end as well. I get the feeling though that there's a lot of competition in this camp amongst guys who are like that, so he might have his work cut out for him to get on the team.

Up front....the only WHL guy I'm totally confident about is Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and he's the WHL alumnus in the group, not even an active WHL player right now. He is a no-brainer as the #1 center and go-to offensive guy on Canada; I believe he'll be the first player at the tournament in a long long time who has a full season in the NHL under his belt and his .85 PPG in the NHL last year at age 18 indicates he SHOULD dominate this tournament offensively.

Mark McNeill and Colton Sissons should be very good bets for the WHL guys up front, they will fit in very nicely on the 3rd/4th lines, facing opponents' top lines and killing penalties, providing energy, etc. There's competition for those jobs but apart from Boone Jenner there are no returning players slotted to the 3rd/4th lines so there's probably six jobs open (counting the 13th forward) so their chances are very good IMO.

The other WHL forwards - Lipon, Rattie, and Shinkaruk - I see as predominantly offensive guys, they don't really have the size or temperament to be bang-and-crash style players and so I think they need to be in the top six forwards to be on the team. And there's a lot of competition there - besides Nugent-Hopkins, there are returnees Huberdeau, Scheifele and Strome claiming spots in the top six, which means there's two spots available and probably 6-10 players in the running for them. I like Rattie's chances best of the three of them but would not be surprised at all to see none of them make it.