MINNEAPOLIS – While there is no shortage of places to find ice time in the summer, three Minnesota Gophers will get their August ice time with international medals on the line.
On Sunday USA Hockey announced its final 25-player roster for the 2022 World Junior Hockey Championship, which begins this week in Alberta. Current Gophers Brock Faber and Matthew Knies, along with incoming freshman Logan Cooley, were named to the team. The Americans open play versus Germany at 9 p.m. CT on Tuesday in Edmonton.
The roster announcement comes after the team had training camp at USA Hockey Arena in Plymouth, Mich.
We've got our squad. #WorldJuniors 🇺🇸
— USA Hockey (@usahockey) August 7, 2022
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“We had a great week of camp followed by a pair of good pre-tournament games to help us finalize our roster,” said John Vanbiesbrouck, general manager of the 2022 U.S. National Junior Team, in a statement from USA Hockey. “We had some spots to fill from December and we filled them in well. These are hard decisions, but we believe these are the 25 best players to achieve our goal.”
Faber, a junior defenseman from Maple Grove, Minn., was named the team captain last week . He and Knies, who will be a Gophers sophomore forward and is from Phoenix, represented their country last February at the 2022 Winter Olympics in China.
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Cooley, who will be a freshman forward and is from Pittsburgh , was the third overall pick in the July NHL Draft, selected by the Arizona Coyotes. There is also a U of M flair on the Team USA coaching staff, with new Gophers assistant coach Steve Miller and former Gophers player Grant Potulny (the head coach at Northern Michigan) serving as assistants for head coach Nate Leaman.
There has been at least one Gophers player on 43 of the 46 Team USA rosters in World Juniors history, dating back to the first tournament in 1977.
The August event is a re-start of the tournament, which is traditionally played in late December and early January. The 2022 tournament began eight months ago but was canceled after the Americans had played just one game (a win over Slovakia) due to COVID concerns. The 2023 World Juniors will be played per the normal schedule with a different roster, starting shortly after Christmas in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
