World Junior Hopefuls: Laurent Brossoit

Every year, the annual IIHF World Junior Championship tournament provides young hockey players with a great opportunity to show their wares against the best players from the age-group from throughout the world. It’s a great development tool and players as varied as Jarome Iginla, Roman Horak and Leland Irving have had the chance to represent their nations at the World Juniors. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to take a look at the chances of the various Flames prospects vying for World Junior roster spots.

Next up is Laurent Brossoit.

Selected by the Flames in the sixth round of the 2011 NHL Entry Draft, Laurent Brossoit was seen as a promising youngster playing as a back-up for the WHL’s Edmonton Oil Kings. He was seen as a long-term project with potential upside.

Then he won 42 games for Edmonton in his first year as starter and suddenly the Flames looked really smart for gambling on him. He was named the MVP of the Western Hockey League playoffs last year as he back-stopped the Oil Kings to a league championship.

Not only was Brossoit invited to Hockey Canada’s summer camp, he played for the Canadian entry at the Canada-Russia Challenge, and was the starter for both games Team WHL played at the Subway Super Series. In short: Hockey Canada has seen a lot of Brossoit.

In addition, the fact that he was a really good player on a really good WHL team means that he’s played in big games. On the other hand, his Memorial Cup and Canada-Russia Challenge experiences wasn’t fantastic, but he looked very good against Russia in the recent Super Series.

There are two goalies that appeared at the Canada-Russia Challenge, Hockey Canada’s summer goalie camp and the Subway Super Series: Brossoit and Boston’s first round pick Malcolm Subban. Maxime Legace was at the first two, but had lousy numbers to start the year and didn’t play in the Super Series.

So far this season, Subban has strong numbers: a 12-6-3 record, 2 shutouts, 2.25 goals against average and a .929 save percentage. Brossoit has worse numbers (11-2-4, 2.49 GAA and .908 SV%) but is a bit older and has more big-game experience.

Beyond these two guys, there’s a possibility that Jordan Binnington, Zachary Fucale or Etienne Marcoux will be considered for spots on the club due to their excellent stats and records, although none of these guys have played in a Memorial Cup. Granted, they’ve all won as many Memorial Cups as Brossoit has (0).

If you want big-game experience, Laurent Brossoit is probably on the team. He’s won a league championship, he’s played in the Memorial Cup, and he’s played international games against Russia, most recently against the Russians at the Subway Super Series.

That said, Malcolm Subban is most likely pencilled in for a roster spot, which leaves only one spot for a goalie. It’ll be up to Brossoit to out-duel the other camp invitees to win that spot. I fully expect him to get an invite, though.