USA Hockey revealed the roster of 42 players for the World Junior Summer Showcase, and the list includes 14 Minnesotans.
The showcase will run from July 25 to Aug. 2 at Ridder Arena and will include Team Canada, Team Finland and Team Sweden in a series of games that will serve as a preview for the world junior championship, which will be played in Minnesota from Dec. 26 to Jan. 5.
The Minnesotans are goalies Kam Hendrickson (Chanhassen) and Caleb Heil (Victoria); defensemen Logan Hensler (Woodbury), Adam Kleber (Chaska), Sam Laurila (Moorhead), Jacob Rombach (Blaine), Will Skahan (Woodbury) and John Whipple (Minnetonka), and forwards Jacob Kvasnicka (Wayzata), Brendan McMorrow (Lakeville), Max Plante (Hermantown), Cullen Potter (Minneapolis), Will Zellers (Maple Grove) and Brodie Ziemer (Chaska).
The U.S. team is coached by Bob Motzko of the Gophers. The showcase serves as an evaluation camp for the team, which will be finalized in December and must be pared to 25 players.
Team USA and Team Canada will each be split into two teams for the showcase, while Finland and Sweden will have one team each. The schedule is here.
Nine players on the U.S. roster were members of the gold medal winning team at the 2025 world junior championship, including Plante and Kleber, who are sophomores at Minnesota Duluth; Hensler, a sophomore at Wisconsin who was a first-round pick of Ottawa (23rd overall) in June’s NHL draft; Ziemer, who plays for the Gophers; Cole Hutson and Cole Eiserman of Boston University; Teddy Stiga and James Hagens of Boston College, and Trevor Connelly, who has signed with the Vegas Golden Knights.
Hendrickson and Heil play in the U.S. Hockey League; Heil is committed to North Dakota for 2026-27, and Hendrickson is committed to UConn.
Whipple is a sophomore for the Gophers, while Rombach and Kvasnicka are Gophers commits; Laurila and Zellers are headed to North Dakota and McMorrow to Denver. Skahan is a sophomore at Boston College. Potter, son of Olympic gold medalist Jenny Schmidgall-Potter, is a sophomore at Arizona State.
