2016 World Cup of Hockey rosters: Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan named to Team North America

It’s kind of odd that the World Cup of Hockey is branding itself as just that: a World Cup. While the 2004 World Cup had eight distinct nations competing against one another, the 2016 version just has six. 

The other two teams? A collection of various Europeans hailing from nationalities that didn’t make the main cut, and… North American children.

Players from Canada and the United States who are 23 years old and younger at the time of the tournament, to be exact.

And hey, you know what? The Calgary Flames are a rebuilding team. As such, they have a lot of players 23 and under. In fact, they have a lot of good players 23 and under. And so, two Flames have been named to Team North America’s initial 16-men roster: Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan.

And that’s not even counting Sam Bennett and Dougie Hamilton, who can still be named to the team on June 1, when the final seven spots will be named.

The thing I love about Team North America is it answers the age old question: “If I threw all caution and logic of team building to the wind and simply selected every kid who’s really, really good at hockey, how kick ass would it be to watch them?” Because we know you can’t really have a team composed of just kids and expect it to be successful against other teams – over the long term.

Over a short tournament, though? Hell yes you can.

And no doubt having a couple of young Flames is going to help them out. 

Johnny Gaudreau’s presence on the roster was, of course, a given. With 63 points in 62 games this season, he’s sixth in NHL scoring; he’s also the youngest scorer in the top 10 this year. Actually, the only player younger than him in the top 50 is Filip Forsberg, and he’s tied for 45th, so… yeah. He already has 128 points over 143 career NHL games, too.

Gaudreau, 22, is one of the most offensively dynamic players in the entire world; he was going to make any team he was eligible for, no question. He’s played in two big international tournaments thus far as well: in 2013 he helped the Americans win World Juniors gold, scoring nine points over seven games as one of his team’s leading scorers. And then in 2014, right after he played his first NHL game, he represented the United States in the World Championship, scoring 10 points over eight games as America’s second best offensive weapon. (Seth Jones, who he will be reunited with on this team, was number one.)

Then there’s his centre, Sean Monahan. At 21 years of age, he’s playing his third NHL season already – and has three straight 20+ goal seasons under his belt to match. With 140 points already put up over 218 games played, Monahan is second in scoring out of all players selected from the 2013 draft: just nine points behind Nathan MacKinnon, also on the team.

Unlike Gaudreau, Monahan doesn’t have as much meaningful international experience. He missed out on playing in the World Juniors due to his being in the NHL at the time. He did, however, play for Canada in the 2014 World Championships, but he only scored two assists over the eight games he dressed in, as he was ultimately used more as an extra forward than anything else. That certainly won’t be the case in this tournament, though.

Think there’s room for Sam Bennett and Dougie Hamilton on there? Probably.

This is going to be a fun team to watch.