Montreal Canadiens: Three Prospects Look To Improve Path To Medal At World Juniors

The Montreal Canadiens have three prospects in action at the World Junior Hockey Championships today. They will be fighting to win their divisions and improve their path to gold.

The Montreal Canadiens have three prospects in action at the World Junior Hockey Championships today. With just two more days left in the preliminary round, teams are jockeying for position to give themselves the best path toward the gold medal game on January 5th. All three Habs prospects playing today definitely have their eyes set on gold.

The first game this morning will see Mattias Norlinder and team Sweden take on Kazakhstan at 9:00 AM Eastern time. Sweden has won both of its games so far, sneaking by Finland with an overtime win on Boxing Day and defeating Switzerland as well. Them taking on Kazakhstan is the most lopsided matchup in the tournament and should be an easy win. The Swedes have won 50 straight preliminary round games and won’t lose that streak to Kazakhstan.

We should get to see more of Norlinder than we have in the first two games. He has been serving as the team’s seventh defender and thus he is playing the least minutes of all Swedish defensemen. If this game gets out of reach early (as it should) Sweden will likely rest their top guys and let the lower players on the depth chart play heavy minutes.

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In Sweden’s first game, Norlinder was on the ice for 7:18 in a game that wasn’t decided until there were four seconds remaining in overtime. Sweden took a 5-0 lead against Switzerland and Norlinder then took on a bigger role. He played 11:26 in that game and should see another bump in his ice time today against Kazakhstan who have lost 5-3 to Switzerland, 3-1 to Slovakia and 7-1 to Finland.

At 1:00 PM Eastern time, we will see the Americans with Cole Caufield and Jordan Harris taking on Czech Republic. Caufield finally hit the scoresheet in the United States latest game, getting a power play assist in a big 3-1 victory over Russia.

Group B with USA, Canada, Russia, Czech Republic and Germany remains wide open but with a win the United States would finish at least second in their group. This would ensure they avoid Sweden and Finland in the quarterfinals and give them the easiest route through the medal round.

Czech Republic have had an odd tournament thus far. They beat Russia, but then lost to Germany. Russia then routed Canada 6-0 so was their win over Russia just a fluke on opening day? Are they really good? If so, why did they lose to Germany? Is Germany also really good?

It’s tough to figure out this group, but a lot will be decided today. Germany plays Canada in the morning which should answer some questions about how good Germany really is this year. The afternoon game should tell us more about Czech Republic as well.

What we do know about the American team, is Jordan Harris is quietly having a solid tournament. He is averaging about 16 minutes per game, scored a big goal against Germany and continues to increase his ice time. He plays a steady, smart, no-nonsense style of defence where he doesn’t jump out at you and dominate at either end of the ice. He does make subtle breakout passes that lead to offence and plays well positionally defensively and shuts down the opposition.

Caufield was placed on a line with Alex Turcotte (finally) in the Americans third game. The two Wisconsin Badgers looked great together and it resulted in Caufield’s most effective game of the tournament. They are effectively playing third line minutes, but Caufield did more with the puck in that game than either of the previous two and looks to be getting more confident.

Look for Norlinder to get tons of ice time and Caufield and Harris to play their biggest roles yet for the United States as all three prospects try to lock up first place in their groups and secure the easiest route to the gold medal game at this year’s World Juniors.