The young N. American top players and the New Normal of the international hockey

[Lempo]

Let us clarify, I'm talking of a potential New Normal but I hit the letter counter for the title.

Anyway. It's looking like a possibility that the NHL players may not be participating to the next Olympics. It's also a possibility that if the World Cup thingy catches on, the organizer may want to continue to have three instead of two North American teams for that tournament and have a Team North America reserved for the top U23 North American players.

Effectively this would mean that there is no chance of seeing any of the emerging young talents to dress up for Team USA or Team Canada for a best-on-best game.

Do you find it plausible or desirable that the North Americans would go on to adopt the IIHF World Championships, or the Skoda Cup, as the showcase and international try-out forum for their younger top talents who are not going to be making it into the World Cup teams, if World Cup continues under the same format? Not unlike what Team USA kind of did for this year already.

With the World Championships taking place while the Stanley Cup playoffs are still going on, many of the European teams are as is missing some of their top players and will out of necessity be giving a spot in the team to any emerging youngster who has experience from men's games from their national leagues and is deemed good enough for the job.

So, will the World Championship somewhat accidentally get effectively positioned as something between the World Junior Championships and whatever best-on-best tournament there may be as the teams age structure goes, and will this possibly be becoming a new identity in a way for the tournament, instead of the "two week post-season European holiday" you sometimes see it somewhat snidely coined as?

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[Lempo]

Especially now that Auston Matthews and Patrik Laine, the Draft eligibles projected to go 1OA and 2OA made it into their national teams and did nicely enough in the tournament and may have widened the gap to projected 3OA Jesse Puljujärvi, who still gave an okay performance in the U18 tourney around the same time, it's conceivable that the more competitive-minded draftees of the coming years will on their part start eyeing for a spot in the men's tournament that takes place only a month before the Draft in June for to make the final statement for themselves.

 

[Macman]

The NHL has already said the two gimmick teams are likely just a one-off for 2016 with future tournaments holding qualifying games to round out the field.

 

[JackSlater]

The NHL has already said the two gimmick teams are likely just a one-off for 2016 with future tournaments holding qualifying games to round out the field.

That certainly remains to be seen, since it goes against what the NHL wants and what the NHL could have done for the 2016 tournament.

As far as the thread topic... for Canada and USA, the IIHF World Championship is already basically a tournament for young players to try out for a bigger team. I don't see the situation proposed in the OP as a change.

 

[xxxx]

I think that nothing will change really in the near future for the WHC. I also don't believe the NHL will continue with the current format of two All-star teams.