Montreal Canadiens: Cole Caufield, Jayden Struble Heading to Scaled-Down World Junior Showcase

The Montreal Canadiens will have two top prospects heading to the World Junior Summer Showcase for the United States.

The Montreal Canadiens have drafted dozens of interesting prospects in the past couple of years. Due to this, they have been well represented at the past few World Juniors. We saw Alexander Romanov dominate from the Russian blue line for the past two years. Cayden Primeau and Ryan Poehling were exceptional for the Americans in the 2019 event. Jesse Ylonen helped Finland knock off Primeau and Poehling in the gold medal game that year.

There should be no shortage of Habs prospects at the upcoming event either. With the Canadiens making 21 draft selections in the past two years, and sitting on another 14 this year. With all those picks, we should expect to see a handful of great prospects on display at the World Juniors once again this upcoming season.

Two of those players could be Cole Caufield and Jayden Struble. The pair of American 19 year olds were invited to the United States World Junior Summer Showcase yesterday.

The Americans, along with Canada, Finland and Sweden have been hosting a summer tournament as a tune-up for the World Juniors. This year, with the global pandemic going on, the even will be scaled back, but Caufield and Struble will be taking part.

This camp will be an opportunity for the top teenaged American hockey players to get together to work with the coaching staff. There are 43 players invited, so literally half of them won’t make the final cut, but the two Canadiens prospects have a strong chance of making the final list.

Caufield will certainly be on the team. He suited up for them at last year’s event, and while he didn’t light up the scoreboard from the second power play and third forward line, he will be a year older and more experienced and has all the skills and tools to be an offensive force for the United States at the next World Juniors.

They could have a high powered offence with seven forwards who participated last year heading to this showcase. A top six that includes Trevor Zegras, Alex Turcotte, Arthur Kaliyev, Matt Boldy, Bobby Brink along with Caufield would be difficult to slow down.

On defence, the Americans will only have Cam York returning from last year’s event. He was their seventh defenceman and got some time on the power play, but should play a more prominent role this year.

With 14 defenders invited to the showcase, it shows Struble is on the shortlist for the team, but it is actually a fairly long shortlist. Still, with his strong play for Northeastern as a freshman last season, he has a great chance to make the final roster with a strong start next season.

Two years ago, Primeau and Poehling were excellent for the Americans. Last season. Jordan Harris and Caufield had a disappointing event that ended with a shutout in the quarterfinals. Hopefully, next season is more reminiscent of the 2019 event for the Habs prospects, and not the 2020 event.