The Athletic Hockey Show - 2026 World Juniors recap

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

The guys give their instant reaction to the 2026 World Junior gold medal game between Sweden and Czechia and recap the rest of the tournament live from St. Paul.This episode was recorded live at 11:30pm ET on January 5, 2026Hosts: Max Bultman, Corey Pronman, and Scott WheelerExecutive Producer: Chris FlanneryProducer: Chris FlanneryGot a question? Ask it here: t.co/fYieuQEg14Watch full episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theathletichockeyshowJoin our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/VTm9VjkFSubscribe to The Athletic: https://theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show Prospect Series. Hey, everybody, Max Boltman here alongside Scott Wheeler and Corey Pranman for a post-world junior episode of the Athletic Hockey Show Prospect Series, Scott and Corey live on site in St. Paul. You can see the, I don't know, warm, itchy, I don't know what word we're going with, commemorative hats here on their heads. If you do hear any background noise from them, that is the celebratory Swedes, Corey, after a world junior gold medal for Sweden. Dominant tournament, it turned out to be for the Swedes.

How did they do this? Dominant-ish. It was a very close call there in the 70th final with Finland in a prolonged overtime and shootout there. With the emphasis being Vigel, Bjork's four breakaways in the overtime period, and eventually a miss shootout attempt as well. They did it by being a very well-rounded team. They got production up and down a lot. lineup. They were a team that could really tilted the ice at even strength. They had really their

top three lines were all very effective, competitive, made plays. They had six defensemen they could trust, in particular their top four defensemen, Leo Shilly Walenius, Felix Carroll, Felix Orkvist, and Sasha Bumidi and played huge minutes and made a ton of plays defensively. We're all very good skaters who get the puck up ice. And, well, if we look at the director of awards, you'll see that Anton Frundel, the Chicago third overall pick who had a great round robin and was a very good player. All tournament was named the best forward.

They don't come close to winning this tournament without the performances of their two draft eligible forwards in Vigel Bjork and Ivar Stenberg. We'll start with Bjork for a second. Bjork came into this tournament. We thought he'd be an important player for them, wasn't sure how important that he'd end up being their clear best center in this tournament. He placed power play. If they had to kill a three on

five penalty, he was the center going over the boards. This is a 17-year-old 5-9 center being the main penalty killer for a team that won the gold medal. He makes a ton of plays, very skilled player, absolutely outstanding performance for him. And Stenberg,

he was good in the round, Robin. He was the best player in the medal round among all teams. Dominant performance. at times all around the puck competes hard, made really high end plays. His gold medal game today has

to be one of the most memorable gold medal games I've seen from a draft eligible. Really impactful play. And we'll compare and contrast them with Gavin McKen. I'm sure we'll get deeper into the show. But really, those two draft eligible for me is what

drove this team and what led them to a gold medal. To think that they can come back to. Like the Stenberg may be in the NHL next year, but Bjork, Bjork will probably play two more of these tournaments. He wasn't, to Corey's point on

the power play and the penalty kill, he led them in face-offs in this event, took, I think at the end of the tournament, almost 20 or 30 more face-offs than the nearest center for the Swedes. They played him in the overtime game to just get to this gold medal game. They played him every other shift.

He took five shifts in three-on-fifes. three overtime, played I think 455 of his nearly 28 minutes in the semifinal to get them here, had four breakways in that game that he didn't score on, and was just all around it. York is like a legit, legit player at this level. And a few months ago, and we talked about it a little bit earlier on in the season, but a few months ago, he was berated by NHL Central scouting. People started to talk about him because of the five-nine listing, they started to talk about him as kind of a late first early second round type in this draft.

No chance coming out of this. And frankly, with the way that he's played over the last two, three seasons here, like this is for me, a top 10, top 15 player in this draft class despite the size. Corey talked about the well-roundedness of this Swedish team. I mean, you could have made a case for four, at least, four Swedes on the All-Star team up front. You could have obviously, Frondell is on the team. Stenberg probably would have been on the team. if that vote takes place after the game instead of at the first intermission.

Bjork certainly could have been on there. And I think Jack Bergland had a case to be on there, made two great plays in the gold medal game and was among their leading scores. It was just a complete depth team effort, Corey. Yeah, this is one of those weird tournaments. It reminded me of the tournament in Vancouver, where Ryan Paley won MVP in that usually when we get to the gold medal game, the directed awards, the media all-star awards are filled with players in the gold medal game. and they're easy to pick because they're among the leading scores. Almost all the leading scores in the tournament were not on Sweden and not on Czechia.

They were predominantly Canadians. And they had, and listen, Zane Perrek and Michael Hage and Gavin McKenna had great tournaments. Really, they were really impactful players in this tournament. But Sweden and Czech got to the gold medal game in similar ways. You know, maybe Czech didn't quite have quite the high-end talent of Stenberg or Bjork or Frondell. But Adam Yearich was my MVP vote. I thought he was impactful. And Thomas Galdes was mine.

Yeah. And then you have Chihar who actually wins the MVP. And I think that kind of speaks to how this team won. It was a committee effort. You know, we don't think of when we come to Junior Hock, we don't think of describing rosters and like playoff style rosters, but that's kind of how they won. They were big, heavy, highly competitive.

All their forwards made life miserable for Canada in that semi-final. They had three lines they could roll that were really, dangerous and won a ton of battles. That blue line was big and imposing, and then you had the Galvis in there who made a ton of plays while also competing well. It was that kind of tournament. There was no real stand out here. I think by the end it became Stenberg,

but it really took till the very end for him to distinguish himself in that way. I think most of the tournament, there really was no true star level performance. It was really much more about the teams in general. Corey, I was just talking about the Czech team there when he talks about how they won. Galvis, Eurecheck, both defensemen on the check team. You could have made a case for that to be the All-Star defense pairing from this tournament,

if not for Zane Perak and some pretty incredible totals. Just one more thought on the check team, Scott. I mean, they will lose, obviously, some top talent here, not going to return quite as much as the Swedes, but a really strong showing from this check team top to bottom. For sure. And Corey talked about, we talked about Galvis and Eurecheck in the play of them. Jacob Bibiger was absolutely outstanding and sort of a steadying role.

alongside Adam Uriacek on that blue line. Radeem Murka, a top 10 pick, their highest drafted player, was their number four defensemen in terms of use. They really relied on those three primary guys, and then they played Merka about 17, 18 minutes a night, and Max Senechka, a second round pick of the Utah Mammoth, was their number five defensemen,

and clearly the best number five defensemen at this year's tournament. Like, he was excellent for them as well. I thought his positive on-ice results, he was his length and mobility. He just takes up so much space. those guys, those five defensemen were key. You're right. They won't be returning some very important players next year,

but they'll still have Adam Bonach. They'll still have Vaslav Nestrasil. They're Ridi Merca is eligible to return again next year. They should still be a competitive team. And that's been a theme of this tournament. They've won four straight medals. They've been as good as any other nation over the last five years. Five straight trips to the top four through the second.

semi-finals and playing for a medal at this tournament and four straight medals now, two silvers and two bronze. So full marks to them. I mean, we always talk about Sweden and Canada and USA, but the checks are as good at this U-20 level over the last several years as anybody. There will be people listening to this show who heard our roster projection episode about a month ago where we fought it out over Canada and the embarrassment of riches the Canadians had to choose from. Let's talk about how we got to the fact that this was. was a Sweden-Chekia final with no Canadians there. They win the bronze medal.

I'm not going to say they had a terrible tournament or anything. The checks out played them. I did think it was a deserved win. They did. But Canada ultimately, like, not here. So what went wrong for Canada at this tournament, Scott? I think a few things went wrong. A, they just never figured out who they trusted both on the back end and up front.

Their second, quote unquote, second line with Michael Hage, Brady Martin, and Gavin McKenner was their best line through the preliminary. round. But you always knew that in order for Canada to win this tournament and win gold, that the top line of Tijiginla, Michael Misa, and Porter Martone was going to have to get going. You look at their stats at the end of the tournament, they were all above point per game. Carter Martone led Canada and goals with six at this year's event. But Misa in particular looked vanilla more often than he looked impressive. I thought Ginnler was the best of those three. Martone had some moments, but also sort of let the moment in a couple of important situations.

get to him a little bit. And as a result, up front, when Brady Martin went down and they couldn't go to the line that they'd been going to, they didn't really have anybody to turn to. They relied a little bit too much on their third line of Sam O'Reilly, Colbo Duay, and Caleb Dainway, all three who played well. O'Reilly had a really positive tournament in particular, but they didn't know who to go to up front. And then on the back end, they fully never trusted Zane Perak defensively to be a true number one, like to play 25 minutes a night at this event. He played 18, 19 minutes at this event throughout the tournament. And they never found anyone to play around him.

Cam Reed really struggled. Harrison Brunick back from the NHL really struggled. Ben Danford and Kayshan Aitchison struggled as a pairing at times. And we're frankly asked to do too much as a pairing. It just never really clicked. And Ethan McKenzie, who was a great story in camp and pressed at camp, the level looked like it was a bit much for him in the bigger games as well. So that was the big thing for me.

they missed a Sam Dickinson that they could just roll out there over and over and over again and the coaching staff never really found who they could shorten the bench to the top teams that had success at this year's tournament did ultimately shorten the bench.

Sweden in overtime just kept going to Stenberg and Bjork, right? And Canada didn't know who, and obviously the Czechs basically played five or six players when it mattered. Canada never really figured out who those guys were for them. Yeah, I think for me,

the blue line struggles were obvious, but I think you look at the skill level, like Atkinson is not a skilled guy, Reed's not a skilled guy, even Brunachie, like McKenzie, those are not high-end puck movers. They knew what they were getting when they brought those guys in.

Like they knew this is going to happen. Zane Perak was the only one on this team that could make a high-end play. That was evident from the get-go. Maybe Verhof one day can be that guy, but he's a 17-year-old. For me, the story of their downfall comes down to the Brady Martin injury

and the fact that, as we discussed several times, they brought no plan B in terms of skill, guys. They cut Jake O'Brien. They didn't invite Justin Carbono. They dressed 12 forwards in that game. They did not dress a 13th forward to even give Carter Bear or Liam Green Tree a chance to help them on a scoring line. They basically decided they only had six forwards they could trust to make a play. And that was it. They also brought Liam Green Tree knowing before the tournament even started, before the puck even dropped on the tournament, they had made up their mind that he didn't have the feet, didn't have the pace. So some miscalculations there.

And for Michael Mesa, who dominated the OHL last year, a second overall pick, super talented skater pocket handler, and Porter Martone, who has a plethora of hockey Canada experience, played on the senior men's team last spring. These were bad performances. Even more though Martone led them in goals. Like, these were underwhelming performances that make you question just their pure offensive ability at times.

This is not the NHL. They're playing against average junior level players at times, and they could not take over those games for any meaningful stretch. In particular, Mesa, at least Martone, made the occasional play show some chippiness. Mesa was invisible. This was a disastrous tournament for him. And people were going to say, well, it's an NHL alone, yada, yada, yada,

it's only a couple of games. I get it. But when you think of the bar that he set for himself and that we expect of Michael Mesa based on what he showed in junior, this was really bad. And I think if you look at the main reason why they lost, it's really on that line and him in particular. I think it's specifically the timely scoring too, though, right? I mean, Canada scored four more goals at every game but one in this tournament, that being the Latvia game early on.

But it was when they needed one, right? And in that back and forth game against Chekia, you didn't really know who you were looking to for the big moment. It wasn't Gavin McKinty. It was probably Michael Hage. And he's a little band-up. It felt like it was Zane, frankly. Like, Zane was the one who made in the big moments when they were trailing in games. I think he tied like three or four games.

It was Zane who made the play. Yeah. It was an abnormal situation where by the end, they kept trying like Brunerke and McKenzie on the second power pole unit. By the end, they were just telling Zane Perret to run the whole power play. Yeah, he ran both minutes. The only one, all tournament, who seems like he can make a high end play with the fuck.

I don't know if you guys saw. We had a comment from Lobowski 55 on if Canada wins this with Celebrini. Not only do I think Canada wins this with Celebrini, I think Finland wins it with Celebrity, the Czechs when it was Celebrity, the U.S. wins it with Celebrity. You can throw that a stupor in there too. Yeah, that's right. It's frustrating for me when these tournaments happen, and this becomes like these, like, great discourses about the state of the federations and hockey in certain countries. Because that's a microcosm, right?

You have players that are available. You have injuries that have happened. We can get into those guys who are guys who weren't loaned out. It's the age group's qualities can fluctuate from year to year. I think it's fair to assess the players that are here and actually criticize them or praise them based on how they play. But, like, yes, obviously, like Canada's hockey is not in trouble. You look at the draft every year. There's bloody of great hockey players come out of Canada.

And, yes, obviously, if they would have gotten all their players, they would have rolled over everybody. But that's not really, I don't think anybody with a brain is saying that, Canada is having some issues when it comes to developing hockey talent. And frankly, Canada with this collection of talent, every single one of their forwards was a first round pick here. They had two second round pick goalways who started games for them. Like there's no, there should be no excuses even with the talent that's here. Three years in a row with one bronze medal to show for it should be unacceptable for hockey. Yeah, like I think I saw the Hollywood from the management head that said they, if only we had gone

like Sam Dickinson or it's like, come on. Like you, you have like, everyone on your team is a first round pick. If you needed one more first round pick to win, like, you could just say things didn't go well. Or like, the checks are a good team and they all played us. You know, we get some bad penalties or like whatever. Like, it's, I have no time for that. Yeah, it's a comment from Smelly Carcas. How does Canada move forward at next year's tournament to ensure a better team that can be trusted

and not rely on two players? Well, I would say that one thing I spoke with someone on the Concord. during the intermission here, just met with a couple of people. And one thing that I will say is that there's a belief that the 07 group that's going to carry this team next year may not have the star power. It doesn't have a Porter Martone. It doesn't have a Michael Mesa. It doesn't have a Zane Perrek.

But they've won at every single level. And I think next year you're going to see a very different team Canada than the last couple that we've seen. It's going to be read by Brady Martin, if he's not in the NHL with Nashville, and Cole Reshny and Caleb Dainwaya, players who have typically performed very well for hockey Canada, including at last year's U18 Worlds, but aren't the marquee. And so it'll be a good test of Canada and the way that they want to build that roster, because they're going to be at a little bit of a skill deficiency relative to where they've been before.

If they get Gavin McKenna, which is possible, and I think Gavin is considering going back to Penn State, if they get Gavin for a third time, that gives them that sort of ultimate skill guy. But if they don't get Gavin, and if a Brady Martin's in the NHL, Canada is going to be tested again next year, and particularly by this Swedish age group, which is going to be returning. Bjork, as we mentioned off the top, potentially Stenberg, potentially even Thrundel, though, Frundell will be in the NHL or HL with the Blackcox next year and has a really strong age group coming out of this year's draft behind Bjork and Stenberg that are going to be important players for that team as well. So there's a bit of a chance, I think, here for the Swedes to go on the run. And Canada, despite three poor tournaments in a row, better be careful that they don't make it for. I think the way you not rely on a handful of players, and it's something that I've said now several times in the last few weeks, is you cannot build a roster with kind of blinders on and say, these are the guys' rules. They're going to excel in them.

We have a plan. It's going to be executed flawlessly because we know that's not how it goes. We know when the tournament starts, the guy you think is going to be on the first line, like say the line with, Misa and Gimelan and Martone may not perform the way you expect. So you need to bring a certain amount of different types of talent with you and give yourself options for when things don't go exactly the way you play. I'm sympathetic to the fact that you need to have guys who play hard and guys who can kill penalties.

And that third line with Dinoje, Bo Dwayne, Sam O'Reilly was excellent and they fulfilled that rule. But you probably didn't need to also bring Braden Kutz and Carter Bear and Jett Lechenko. you probably could have felt a little bit more skill in here. And maybe Jacob Ryan or Justin Carboneau or whoever else you could have mentioned may not have excelled. They might have been terrible at this level. There's a reason why they got cut. You know, Carbonell's hockey sense and O'Brien's pace.

Like there's legitimate issues, like why the management group went a different way. But if you only give yourself so many options, then yes, you're going to only, if a couple of those guys fail, then yes, you're only going to rely on two players. Well, you talk about the cyclical nature of age groups, and there's no team that that's more true for at this tournament than Team USA. Back-to-back goals at the previous two tournaments out in the quarters this time, I would struggle to even call it an upset to Finland based on what we saw in pool play, Corey. So we'll go to the autopsy for the U.S. to you. What went wrong for Team USA? Yeah, I think we were talking all through this cycle about that.

They were not a guarantee to get out of the quarterfinals. This was a team that always looked like they were in a little bit of trouble. obviously they had some injury issues with Trevor Connolly right before the tournament starts. They lose Colts in the middle of the tournament. They lose Max Plont. But even those, and Hudson came back towards the end and he played well in the quarterfinal. But those issues didn't really get to the heart of the problem, where I think first, first, they're top players, which they did not have the first rounders, the amount of first runners are used to seem from Team USA,

never mind of team Canada. There's only a handful of legit first round picks. on this team. And collectively, they played fine. I thought James Hagen's played good. He was an effective player for them. He produced. He drove play.

He definitely didn't dominate, though, or really take over a game at any point. Riker Lee, first round picked by Nashville, had some good stretches and some bad stretches. Will Horcroft, first round picked by the Penguins, who was having a fantastic year in college,

was all but invisible at times in many of those games. And Cole Eisenman was sometimes worse than invisible. He was often a negative for the team with his turnovers and decision-making. And so now you're looking, okay, what about the non-first-round picks? You mean, they started asking a lot. These were guys that I had serious questions on can they get scoring from these guys. L.J. Moody, Teddy Stiga, Brody, Brody, Zemer, Will Zellers ended up being their best player

offensively anyways as a late addition. But those guys collectively cannot carry you to a medal. They just, they're a good player that they didn't have that talent level. The blue line outside of Hudson was a disaster. You know, similar issues with Canada, where they really only had one guy, well, maybe two really. Chase Reed could make plays. Lou Osborne was decent with the puck. But they really, once Hudson went down,

they had real issues getting reliable minutes from anybody else other than the Osborne Reed pair for stretches, but I think they overplayed them. And then their goaltending was poor. They really needed a lot of things that go well. They needed their star players to have dominant tournaments. And to get secondary scoring like they did from Zellers and others, and that just didn't happen. and the goaltending sunk them in the end as well.

And just as this may be a chance for the Swedes to go in a bit of a run over the next couple of years, don't expect that the Americans are just going to turn it around next year. They're going to have potentially an even tougher time in next year's tournament after losing Hudson and Higgins and not replacing them with anywhere near that caliber of player with these upcoming couple of drafts. I think Reed could be an impactful player though next year. I think like he, I think when you look at for positives, Team USA. The play of Chase Reed

was a big one. This was a guy who I did not know what to expect coming to this tournament. And I think we leave this tournament from a guy who's 6-2 who could skate the way you can, make the kind of plays he can, defended way better than I expected from what I've seen in him in junior hockey. He was a critical defender for this team at even strength on the penalty

kill. I think this is a guy who is going to be in the top five conversation in the upcoming draft. I'll say he's going to the top five. You're talking about 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. I think he's in that range right now coming out of this event. Well, let's go there next because that was one of the storylines of this world juniors is that there is as deep of a draft eligible pool that I think we've seen in quite some time at this tournament. So the big story, as always, was going to be Gavin McKenna, Corey.

We've joked about our constant updating of where McKenna falls. I think we call it as McKenna turns, where does he sit after this world junior's tournament? Well, obviously he had a very so-so first half of Penn State relative to the standard, slightly above a point per game after being in one of the most prolific junior scores. ever seen in the CHL in the modern era. So we have these questions. How does he compete? How is he going to handle it even straight? Can he drive play? Is the scoring going to come at this level?

Is he going to help Canada win a gold medal? Or is it going to go really poorly and the free falls on? I think it was somewhere in between the two extremes of it. It went really well for him and it went really poorly. He had a really good tournament. Ends of getting four points in the bronze medal game. End up being among the tournament's leading scores. I think you can see a lot of stretches for him where he makes that special play,

where he makes a deke or he makes a pass with the puck. That is truly special and unique to the type of skill that he has. You get really excited. And I think there were some times where you had to look for him, where he was often the third best player on that line with Hage and Brady Martin. Or that semifinal. I really didn't think he accomplished all that much and kind of got bullied around by that big physical check blue line.

So we came to this tournament and my thoughts was he belongs to the top of the draft. excellent player, potential top line, top power play winning in the NHL. But there's some debate. There's some other players in the mix here, and he kind of belongs with them. And I think we leave this tournament in the exact same spot. He's at the top of the draft.

He's a great prospect, but he's not a can't miss guy, at least in terms of being a number one pick. And there's going to be debates. If you haven't liked the fact, we've been debating him for a couple months, we'll get ready because it's going to ramp up here in the coming months, especially if he doesn't turn it on the second half at Penn State.

I feel like him, Ivers Stenberg, obviously outperforms him, but then you can get into debates of pure skill level, track record, context, etc. But whether it's Stenberg, whether it's Tyler Lawrence, Keenan Verhoff, Chase Reed, Albert Smith, like he's, there's a group, he's in it where he fits. Well, let's try and figure that out in the coming months. Well, Stenberg's the interesting one, Scott, because it was already like a hard head-to-head. This tournament was really important because Stenberg plays in the S-HL.

It's a different level of play. it would actually be a really fun conversation, like which one is more predictive. Like we see more players come through the NCAA putting up lines like McKenna's this year than we do players putting up lines like Stenbergs in the SHL. And then you see him on the same stage. McKenna leads the tournament scoring, or sorry, above Stenberg on the tournament scoring.

Stenberg more impressive, though. Yeah. And frankly, I would say that we don't typically see what we're seeing out of the SHL. It is a little bit of new territory. You have to go back to Matt's Nazlin to find a player who played at a point per game at a point per game level in the S.HL. Stenberg has outproduced the draft years of the Sedeen brothers who went one, two,

of Peter Forsberg, who went six overall, of Leo Carlson, who went second overall, of Anton Frundel, who obviously went third overall last year. So he's in a little bit of unique territory, but you're right. The sheer numbers coming out of the NCAA are higher and are about to get, even higher because of the influx of talent from Canada now playing at that level. But Stenberg belongs from a statistical standpoint, he belongs at that level. And I think seeing them head to head this week, it's pretty clear that Stenberg absolutely belongs in the conversation at first overall in this draft.

And frankly, I think on my next list, Stenberg is going to be number one for me. I mean, there's no doubt he competes harder. He was way more impactful on the tournament on an even strength basis, just taking over the play, being around the puck a lot. I think the debate's going to come down to what's really come down with McKenna for the entire process is the body of work. Because even though Stenberg's body of work is really impressive, you know, McKenna's body of work is historic. And I think it's going to be a fascinating debate. I think you can talk people who think that if you look at really pure skill, pure hockey sense,

McKenna probably has a notch higher, but then when it comes down to what do you think is going to be predictive in the NHL, how is it going to translate? for me, the evidence suggests a slight lean towards Denberg at the moment. Yeah. The other draft eligible is this, I think it's fair to say Keaton Verhoff didn't really do anything to help himself. Did he hurt himself, Corey? Good moments and bad moments.

I think there were times where you saw him make a really difficult play. You see a 6-4 defenseman who can move and seems to have some different offensive abilities than a guy like at Albert Smith or Carson Carls who we saw here. You can get really excited. And there was sometimes he struggled. And he got himself into trouble, really costly turnover at the end of the round Robin against Finland that I thought would get him bench ended up, didn't.

That led to a critical late goal. Some ups and downs, nothing too stressful. I think some people wonder, like, well, you're talking about McKinney, a tournament-league score, and Stenford being overly the best player here. How can he even be in the same conversation? Well, he's nearly a full year younger than both of them, too. And also he's six-four versus being 5-10 or 5-11 like those guys.

So I think the projection there is still really exciting. It is interesting. I'd be curious, Scott. Like how would you order Carl's Verhoff, Chase Reed? You could probably put Smiths and maybe even Daxon Rudolph right now at the top of this draft, among the D. I think Chase Reed would probably be in the poll position of that group. And then I think you get into, did you include Verhof in that? Yeah.

Okay. So Verhof would still be in pole position for me within that group. But I think Chase Reed's right behind. and then I think the rest of those guys are in a cluster, but they're all arguably in the top 10. Rudolph would probably be a little bit of a cut below Carl's and Smiths for me, but I'd probably go Verhoff, Reed, Smiths, Carl's, Rudolph.

Corey? Yeah, similar for me. I like Carl's a lot. I probably would have a little bit higher than where Scott hasn't, but otherwise it's, I think, pretty similar, although I've got to work some stuff out still with the draft process, but from what I've seen right now, that'd be very similar. I don't think we're going to be talking about William Hawkinson in that company,

but I don't think he hurt himself either, and he probably did himself some favors this last two weeks. Yeah, puck plays a little limited, but he's still like a 6-4 guy who could skate, it's pretty physical, and he's going to be a tough e-valk because he's played SHL all year. That's a tough level. It comes here. This is the World Juniors, playing games really good players.

Does he look like he can make really difficult plays with the puck? Probably not. If he was playing J-20, he probably would have, like, 30, you know, be on pace for 30, 40 points this year. Maybe it looks a little bit different. I don't know. I like a, you look like a positive player. It looks like a guy who could play in the NHL.

Maybe not in a major minute type of role, but a guy who I think looks like an NHL defenseman. Yeah. All right. Well, after a great tournament from you guys coverage-wise in Minneapolis and St. Paul, I will let you go finally get some rest. Thank you all for joining us for this episode of the athletic hockey show prospect series.

We'll talk to you soon.