Tuesday, December 4, 2007

World Juniors Time

Some of the team rosters for the 2008 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships have been announced, and we're pleased to report that Kyle Okposo has been selected to the U.S. team.

This year's tournament takes place in the Czech Republic and begins on Boxing Day (December 26th for non-Commonwealth readers). This is the second consecutive World Juniors team that Kyle has been named to. Astute readers will remember Kyle's dismal single point performance last year in Sweden. Here's hoping that 2008 treats him better. If experience is the best teacher, he has hopefully learned from it and will exhibit improvement this time.

Now some of you read this blog for many different reasons. We get not only Kyle's fans, but Islanders fans, Gophers fans, general hockey fans, and everything else. So here are, broken down by affiliation, those who will be playing in the 2008 World Juniors:

(as of December 26th, 2007)

Islanders' draft picks:
Kyle Okposo (US team)
Rhett Rakhshani (US team)
Rob Figren (SWE team)
Stefan Ridderwall (SWE team)
Tomas Marcinko (SVK team)

University of Minnesota Golden Gophers:
Kyle Okposo (US team)
Cade Fairchild (US team)
Mike Carman (US team)
Ryan Flynn (US team)
Jordan Schroeder (2008 UM letter of intent) (US team)

Canada's squad will be announced after their selection camp on December 10th-14th. While no future Islanders or current Gophers are eligible, it will be noteworthy to see if John Tavares (a.k.a. "The Next One") is selected.

If we've missed anyone please let us know by dropping a line in the 'Comments' section below.

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