Wild prospects at World Juniors camps

If you feel like we just had the World Junior Championships, and wondering why another one is happening so quickly, well you would be correct in doing so.

With the 2022 World Juniors rescheduled and played in August, this is a lot of prospect action on our televisions within the last several months. Nevertheless, the 2023 World Juniors will be starting up on Dec. 26 this year in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Moncton, New Brunswick. And the Minnesota Wild will be represented.

Each nation is slowly unveiling their selection camp rosters, but with Canada, the United States, and Sweden, all having done it, the Wild’s key prospects that will be at this tournament have already been named, for the most part.

Named to selection camps

Not announced, but most likely will be on roster

With no team being demoted from the weird rescheduled tournament, we will probably see the same cast of characters, except some that have aged out. Defensemen Daemon Hunt, Ryan O’Rourke, and Brock Faber have all graduated out of the Under-20 tournament, so the crop of Wild prospects is certainly thinner but still enough to keep an eye on.

Russia is still banned from international tournaments by the IIHF, and that’s unfortunate for Wild fans strictly on an on-ice level, since that means 2022 first-round pick Danila Yurov won’t be present.

Among the six prospects that will have a shot at making their country’s roster, we estimate that it will be just Caedan Bankier that might see a tough path to making this Canadian team. They are so many skilled forwards that it will be tough to compete, but Canada does like to add some size to their depth forwards for this tournament and since the 6-foot-2 Bankier is among the tallest forwards at selection camp, he can have some advantage. We’ll have to see.

The tournament stretches from Dec. 26 to Jan. 5 and hopefully we can see at least one of the Wild’s prospects reach that gold medal game.