The Calgary Flames have added a lot of new, young faces to their organization over the last little while. Fans and media got our first eyes on them recently at the club’s annual development camp at Winsport.

The next event we may see youngsters at is USA Hockey’s World Junior Summer Showcase at the end of July, which is the first precursor event leading up to the 2025 World Junior Championship in Ottawa during the holiday season.

With development camp behind us and the Summer Showcase just ahead, which Flames prospects could be headed to the World Juniors?

The World Juniors, which are the International Ice Hockey Federation’s annual under-20 men’s championships, are open to players born in 2005 or later.

As has been the case since the 2022 World Juniors, Russia and Belarus are not eligible for the tournament due to IIHF sanctions related to their invasion of Ukraine. As a result, Flames prospects Matvei Gridin, Yegor Yegorov and Kirill Zarubin – otherwise age eligible – aren’t eligible to participate.

If you’re trying to build your team for a big competition, you’re going to probably err on the side of players you’re more familiar with, which in this case would be players that have competed for their countries in the past.

Four Flames prospects have previously represented their countries in major international events:

We would suspect these four players have the best chances of making their national teams. If we’re pressed, we would guess that Parekh, Hurtig and Mews (in that order) are the most likely to do so.

The Flames have another five Canadian prospects that haven’t yet donned a jersey for an international competition: Eric Jamieson, Andrew Basha, Luke Misa, Jacob Battaglia and Hunter Laing. (Laing was born in the United States to Canadian parents, so we’re lumping him in here.) Of these players, we would argue that Basha, Misa and Battaglia could get themselves on Hockey Canada’s radar. However, Canada’s national team is one of the toughest to make because of how many good players come from that country, so they may be in tough for spots even if they have superb seasons.