Five Kings prospects and one future Duck invited to Canadian junior team camp
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Canada’s obsession with hockey seems to peak twice a year: during the Stanley Cup finals and during the world junior championships.
The world junior tournament, traditionally held between Christmas and New Year’s, will be staged in Saskatoon and Regina, Canada, from Dec. 26 through Jan. 5. And the Kings could be very well represented on Team Canada.
Five Kings prospects were invited among 36 players asked to attend to the selection camp of the defending champion Canadian team. Invitations were sent to forwards Brayden Schenn and Brandon Kozun, defensemen Colton Teubert and Nicolas Deslauriers, and goaltender Martin Jones. Kozun was born in Los Angeles but moved to Calgary, Canada, with his family when he was 10.
No other NHL team has had more than three of its prospects invited to the camp, which will be held Dec. 12-16 in Regina. Center Brandon McMillan, chosen by the Ducks in the third round of the 2008 draft, was the lone Duck prospect invited.
Schenn, the fifth pick in the June draft, made his Kings debut last week on a one-day NHL regular season tryout agreement. He’s the scoring leader for his junior team, Brandon of the Western Hockey League, with 41 points. Kozun was chosen in the sixth round of the June draft and leads the WHL and his junior team, the Calgary Hitmen, with 51 points. Teubert was chosen 13th in 2009 and plays for the WHL’s Regina Pats. Like Schenn and Kozun, he’s the captain of his team.
Deslauriers, 18, was a third-round pick in June. He plays for the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL). Jones, 19, was signed by the Kings as an unrestricted free agent a year ago. As a teammate of Kozun’s in Calgary, Jones has played in 17 games and has a 12-5-0 record, a 2.74 goals-against-average, a .901 save percentage and one shutout.
Here’s the full selection camp roster.
Taylor Hall and Tyler Seguin, incidentally, are supposed to be the top two picks in the 2010 entry draft, though it’s not clear in which order they’ll go.
--Helene Elliott