Mandatory Credit: Richard Mackson-USA TODAY Sports
NHL World Cup Of Hockey: Europe
As I said earlier, I think this is a great idea. Countries like Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Slovakia and Latvia can’t compete with the big boys yet. This allows them to do so and for each of these countries where hockey is thriving to show off their best talents. I tried to include as many countries as I reasonably could.
FORWARDS: Tomas Tatar, Marian Hossa, Mikkel Boedker, Anze Kopitar, Thomas Vanek, Mats Zuccarello, Nino Niederreiter, Marian Gaborik, Tobias Rieder, Zemgus Girgensons, Jannik Hansen, Frans Nielsen, Lars Eller
A pretty darn talented forward group, albeit one that lacks elite level talent. Still, this is a very competitive forward group. Would be a very fast and skilled one. I think Girgensons is going to be much better come 2016. He gets a bad rap because of the NHL All-Star voting last season, but he’s a really good player stuck on a really bad team. I think that changes this season as Buffalo is clearly better than they were last year.
DEFENSEMEN: Zdeno Chara, Lubomir Visnovsky, Andrej Sekera, Christian Ehrhoff, Roman Josi, Dennis Seidenberg, Mark Streit, Mirco Mueller.
This is a surprisingly solid blue line. Obviously, Chara is a huge question mark. But I really like this blue line group. Mirco Mueller is a really bold choice, but he’s incredibly talented and he’s arguably the best puck mover of this group. That’s not an insult to this group, that’s a testament to how good Mueller is.
GOALIES: Frederik Andersen, Jonas Hiller, Jaroslav Halak
Hiller would be the likely starter of this group, as he has had a ton of success in international play. However, Andersen is a very talented young goalie who could unseat Hiller.
Next: The Young Stars