Hockey Canada's WJC Roster
With Canada’s elimination from this year’s World Juniors, this seems like a reasonable time to talk about the roster the Canadians assembled and what could have been. In order to do this, I’ll make use of the results of my own WAR model for each of the CHL leagues.
I highlighted what I see as the most important numbers in the tables below, but a quick explainer:
xGF/xGA: Even Strength On-Ice Impact on xG for/against the player’s team, calculated via RAPMs, so corrected for teammates/opponents/situation.
xGD: Sum of xGF and xGA impacts
BPM: Even Strength Boxscore Impact, essentially an estimate of the on-ice impact based on the boxscore things the player does (Shots/Goals/Assists/Passes/Entries)
EVO = Even Strength Offensive GAR (BPM + xGF + Shot Quality + Shooting
EVD = Even Strength Defensive GAR (xGA + Shot Quality Against)
EV = EVO + EVD, total Even Strength GAR
PPO = Powerplay Offensive GAR
PKD = PK Defensive GAR
Total = Total GAR
I decided to focus mostly on the even strength metrics. The reasoning being that even if you exclusively select by EV metrics, you’ll end up with plenty of players on the roster good enough to build a great PP and a good PK.
Forwards
Who they brought:
Easy:
Gavin McKenna: Putting up Bedard-like numbers at that age, already dominating the WHL.
Berkly Catton: One of the most dominant offensive players in the CHL, unreasonable amounts of controlled entries and slot entries.
Nadeau is putting up decent numbers in the AHL and was dominant in the NCAA last season, so he seems like a safe bet as well.
Ritchie, Rehkopf, Howe, Martone, Gauthier easily justify their spots on the roster based on their league performances.
I would probably also keep either Cataford based on the strength of his 23/24 season (98th percentile in the QMJHL in EV GAR/60) or Easton Cowan, since he is interesting where my WAR model doesn’t really credit him all that much even though he put up very impressive offensive numbers.
If we want to stick with 14 forwards, that’d leave us with four to five more forwards to pick, although ideally you’d include two centers in that.
Let’s see a selection of who they didn’t bring:
This is just the top 15 of CHL forwards ranked by EV GAR/60 percentile in their respective league.
Obviously Tij Iginla is injured, but you still have players like Sawchyn, Barkey, Cristall, Misa, Sennecke on this list. All of whom would have given the canadians more scoring punch without being defensive liabilities. Sawchyn and Misa also play center for their club teams, so that wouldn’t have necessarily been an issue either. This is also just me picking the guys I’ve heard of from this list, there are plenty more, who, based on the stats alone, appear to be qualified.
In a scatter plot:
Defense
Who they brought:
Bonk, Schaefer and Price seem to be fairly easy picks based on their performances this season.
Molendyk and Akey might be able to justify their presence on the team with their much better performances in a larger sample last season (98th and 97th percentile in EV GAR/60 respectively).
Possible Alternatives:
Zayne Parekh jumps out, having excellent EV impacts the last two seasons in the OHL along with gaudy point totals:
Étienne Morin seems like he’d have made a very worthy addition to this roster as well:
The same goes for Finn Harding and draft-eligible Cameron Reid. Interestingly enough, Xavier Villeneuve shows up in the top list as well, despite being only eligible for the 2026 draft.
In a scatter plot:
Goalies
Who they brought:
Not being a goalie guy, I don’t really have a lot of issues with the selection of Carter George.
and Carson Bjarnason, both have performed very well since 2023.
The only other candidate I might make a credible argument for would have been Evan Gardner who has been one of the WHL’s best goalies both this and last season:
Even Ivankovic is an understandable pick, considering the great performance last season (18 GSAx in 19 games last season)
Not really much to say about the goalies. They performed quite well in the tournament, with Carter George saving 3.9 Goals above expected and Ivankovic saving 0.8 goals above expected.