The World Junior Hockey Championship is one of the hardest tournaments to repeat as champions. The last nine years have seen three different countries win the tournament (Canada, United States, Finland) three times, but none of them have won it back-to-back. In fact, the last back-to-back champion was Canada during their five-year run from 2005-2009.
This time the Americans return to Edmonton and Red Deer as defending champions, and will look to reverse that streak.
The first thing you’ll notice with this American team is the sheer talent they are missing. Spencer Knight, Matthew Boldy, Trevor Zegras, Cole Caufield, Arthur Kaliyev, and Alex Turcotte are among the players who have graduated but there’s still enough talent here to expect them to cause trouble.