A Flyers fan’s guide to the 2023 World Junior Summer Showcase

At long last, we actually have some hockey to talk about! In advance of December’s World Junior Champtionship in Gothenburg, the Summer Showcase will be getting underway this weekend to help players make some of their first impressions on their future coaching staffs. No big decisions are going to be made on just this tournament alone, so the stakes aren’t out of control high, but remains a nice little preview and introduction to some players that we’ll be seeing in a few months’ time.

Over the next few days, we’ll see the US team split into two squads and face off against each other, as well as teams from Sweden and Finland. The complete rosters can be found here, but we’re just going to highlight the important bits (that is, the Flyers prospects) real quick.

Team USA White will feature both 2022 draft picks Cutter Gauthier and Devin Kaplan. For Gauthier, who already featured as an important piece of the 2023 team, the stakes are even a little lower. It’s easy to imagine him returning for the 2024 team, but this is a good chance for him to really step up as one of the go-to guys for this team, stepping up into a leadership role, on a team that will see a lot of new faces joining the mix. New faces, of course, like Kaplan, who’s capitlaized on a very solid first college season at Boston University and earned himself an invite to this camp, and will look to make the most of it, as this will be his final year of eligibility.

And then over on the USA Blue side, Flyers 2023 fourth-round pick Cole Knuble is set to make his Summer Showcase debut. Being one of the younger players among this group and not one of the very early picks among them, he likely finds himself a little ways down on the depth chart, but the door remains open for him to make a strong impression and move up. So we’ll see how this one shakes out.

The games kick off tomorrow and run through next Friday. The full schedule is below, and you can get to those streaming links here.

2023 Game Schedule

There are no medals to be given out under this format, but it’s still a nice little break from the doldrums of summer. It’s a bit of hockey to give us all something to talk about, which is all we want in the end, isn’t it?