Way-Too-Early Projected Team Canada Roster for the 2025 World Cup of Hockey
They're really going to do it, aren't they? They're really going to bring back the World Cup of Hockey, at least according to NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly, who said last week the NHL and NHLPA are working toward an international competition for February 2025.
It's been a long time since we've had the world's best-on-best in men's hockey face off against one another in international competition. The 2016 World Cup of Hockey was the last time they did, and that feels like an eternity ago.
This also signals a full-on return to all the best-versus-best competitions, including NHL players going back to the Winter Olympics in 2026 in Italy.
The next-best thing to actually seeing the competition is coming up with the roster we believe would win gold thanks to our genius. Adam Gretz took a shot at what Team USA could run with in 2025 last week, and since I'm positioned perilously close to the Canadian border in Buffalo, New York, I'll do my best to put together the best Team Canada lineup possible.
This should totally be a breeze, right? It's not like Canada ever has all of the pressure on its shoulders to win gold because it's the home of hockey or anything. Let's break it down line by line, pair by pair, and toss the goalies into the mix as well.
Break out the Tim Hortons double-double, gang, we're going in.
First-Line Forwards
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Zach Hyman - Connor McDavid - Mitch Marner
Canada's cup overruns with talent, but when you shake things out by exact position, things can get a little funky. Team Canada could ice a team with 11 centers and one winger if it wanted to, and heck, it might, but in an event like the World Cup of Hockey, instant chemistry goes a very long way.
Having Connor McDavid center the No. 1 line is the biggest no-brainer possible. He's the best player in the league and the most potent offensive weapon in the NHL, coming off a 153-point season. He's the top guy of all the top guys out there.
Having Toronto's Mitch Marner roll with McDavid on the right wing is just about as easy of a decision to make. Marner's speed can keep up with McDavid's, and his skill and goal-scoring ability would shine even brighter playing alongside 97. In part thanks to his consecutive 60-plus-goal seasons, it's such an easy decision it's painful, yet somehow still painless. We contain multitudes here.
The other side is where things get interesting, because when you look at a list of left wings from Canada, a handful of question marks emerge. But when you're looking for someone to play on McDavid's left side, it's all too easy to pick his actual left winger in Zach Hyman.
They've put up incredible numbers together the past couple of seasons, and there's no reason to go messing around with a good thing. Hyman's straight-line game and ability to score in close to the net works great with McDavid's abundance of ability.
Second-Line Forwards
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Jeff Skinner - Nathan MacKinnon - Brayden Point
Part of Canada's "problem" is it has got so many outstanding centers, and in order to put the best team possible on the ice, some of those centers will need to hop on the wing and give it a go.
Thankfully, real hockey isn't like bubble hockey and guys aren't locked at a position all night long. It's a free-flowing game, and players wind up all over the ice to generate chances. But when you've got a center like Nathan MacKinnon, you put him at his natural position up the middle.
His blazing speed, passing and shooting are all S-tier, and he can give everyone fits across the NHL. He's also a Cup winner and is coming off a 111-point season.
With MacKinnon leading the way alongside Lightning center Brayden Point on the right wing (he's a right-handed shot after all) and Sabres offensive threat Jeff Skinner on the left side, you've got a recipe for not just scoring a ton of goals but also driving opponents out of their minds.
Skinner talks trash and trolls opponents fiercely, and his competitive edge fits in perfectly with what we've grown accustomed to seeing from Canada over the years. He infuriates foes and can often goad them into taking bad penalties.
Point plays the game with a bit of an edge, something we've seen in the playoffs the past few years. He doesn't take a lot of guff from opponents and is more than happy to feed it back to them when the time calls for it.
Skinner has scored 30 or more goals in each of the past two seasons and had 40 in 2018-19, while Point was a 95-point player last year and had 92 points in 2018-19. Mix in a three-time MVP finalist like MacKinnon and you've got a trio that's going to wreak absolute havoc on the world.
Third-Line Forwards
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Jared McCann - Sidney Crosby - Mark Stone
The key to understanding team-building is understanding who works well with your best players. In a video game, it's easy. You put the guys with the best ratings together and, boom, you win every game 23-0 and you feel really good about yourself. In reality, it helps to know the kinds of players who will make even the very best alive able to do even more than you'd think possible.
Sidney Crosby is the automatic selection here. If it weren't for McDavid or MacKinnon, he'd be the first-line center, but the torch has been passed. Yet, it doesn't matter that Sid the Kid is now Sid Approaching His 40s, as he had 93 points last season and still rules.
But think about the players who have played the best on his wing. The names that come to mind are guys he made into household names: Chris Kunitz, Pascal Dupuis, Jake Guentzel...the list goes on and on, but these were all straight-line players. They were classic keep-the-stick-on-the-ice guys and played a solid two-way kind of game as well.
Who better to pick as his wingers than a former Penguin who's turned into a goal-cramming stud in Seattle in Jared McCann, who potted 40 last year, and one of the best two-way wingers capable of scoring 25-30 goals a season in Vegas' Mark Stone.
The thought of Crosby being five steps ahead of everyone else on the ice while having a pair of guys who can each crash the net and finish in close like McCann and Stone is exciting. That trio would give everyone in the World Cup fits.
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Fourth-Line Forwards
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Brad Marchand - Connor Bedard - Carter Verhaeghe
We're playing a lot faster and looser with positions when we get down to this part of the lineup because Canada has a ton of talent and we've only got 12 forward spots to work with. The fourth line also requires a little bit of everything.
The first thing we need is a player who can do traditional fourth-line things like defend well, play physically, be kind of a jerk and score goals. Who better than Brad Marchand? He does all of those things and be play outstanding on the penalty kill as well—which we'll need since we know none of these games will be played 100 percent penalty-free.
We also need an outstanding passer and setup guy. This is where Connor Bedard comes in. We're well aware he's yet to play an NHL game, and we know weird things can happen, but Bedard is the latest in a line of sure-thing future stars.
If he isn't already wowing fans across the world by the time the World Cup happens in 2025, we'll be shocked. Get him on the team and put him on a power-play unit and let's have some fun.
And if we're going to have a setup man, we need a finisher. Carter Verhaeghe just scores goals by the tonnage now in Florida. He had 42 this past season, and it makes sense to think if he's playing with the best of the best in this kind of tournament, he'll flourish even in limited minutes. His game is on the rise, and we've lived a little bit in the past enough already.
Having Marchand be the lightning rod for this trio works perfectly because Bedard and Verhaeghe can feast while opponents chase Marchand all over the ice.
First-Defense Pairing
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Josh Morrissey - Cale Makar
To those facing off against Canada and trying to figure out how to get past this first-defense pairing, good luck.
Winnipeg's Josh Morrissey and Colorado's Cale Makar would make up perhaps the most dangerous defense pair in the entire tournament. Both guys can create offense, and both can skate like the wind. They've piled up points and can make a power play click like a unit that's been together for a decade.
Morrissey's brilliant 2022-2023 season flew under the radar mostly because he plays in Winnipeg. But despite that, it was easy enough to see how much he lit up the scoreboard with 16 goals and 76 points. He'd always been a 20-to-30-point scorer in the past, but last season he took off and dominated the Jets blue line.
Makar, the NHL 24 cover guy, had his season interrupted last year by injury. Had it not been for that, he would've put up another campaign for the ages. He averaged 1.1 points per game, posting 66 points in 60 contests. Decent. He's averaged a point or more per game in three straight seasons. He also controls the puck and the pace of the game like few can.
Opposing teams trying to get possession of the puck away from this pairing might find it more like playing a game of keep away while Morrissey and Makar are being mean about it.
Second-Defense Pairing
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Devon Toews - Dougie Hamilton
Sure, we could put Devon Toews with Cale Makar and treat the rest of the world the way the Colorado Avalanche do the rest of the NHL, but we wanted to be even meaner by having Makar play with Morrissey while Toews gets to play with Dougie Hamilton.
Toews isn't just great because he plays with Makar, as he was outstanding when he was with the New York Islanders. But playing for the Avalanche next to Makar has helped him shine brighter. His puck-handling and vision are top-tier, and Colorado's defense is wicked because they have both of them to patrol the ice together or separately.
Since this is Team Canada we're talking about, they don't need to be together to dominate.
Having Hamilton feels like an off-the-radar pick, but if you haven't paid attention to his career the past 11 seasons, sheesh, catch up already. When Hamilton was in Calgary, he emerged as a top-tier puck-mover with a high hockey IQ, but it was in Carolina where his skills really took off while the Hurricanes made the playoffs regularly. He's an elite puck-possession player and generates shots and points.
Third-Defense Pairing
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Owen Power - Brandon Montour
This could be viewed as a controversial decision, but stick with us.
In two years, we'll know a lot more about both of these players, but based on how they've performed already, their collective stocks are on the rise.
Brandon Montour had a career year beyond belief last season. He embraced the role as a puck-carrier across the ice and resembled Erik Karlsson a bit in the offensive zone, unafraid to pinch in and create chances off his rush.
He had 73 points and nearly doubled his previous career high of 37. Once the playoffs started, he was even more clutch with eight goals and 13 points. He was great and helped drive the Panthers to the Stanley Cup Final against Vegas.
Owen Power is coming off his rookie season in Buffalo, posting a solid 35 points, including four goals. His fancy stats were OK, but he also averaged a ton of ice time for a first-year player (23:48 per game) and made a lot of plays that were the kind that left you wondering how he even knew to do it.
We're making a big bet here by choosing Power, but so much of what he showed last year indicates he'll be making fans think we're the smartest people in the world by getting out ahead of it and getting him involved ASAP.
Goalies
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Stuart Skinner, Marc-Andre Fleury, Darcy Kuemper
It's not that long ago that Team Canada's goaltending was, beyond the shadow of a doubt, its absolute greatest strength. Going into various Olympics with Roberto Luongo, Martin Brodeur, Patrick Roy and Carey Price in net, just to name a few.
That's decades of dominance and a time when the hardest decision to make was who to start.
Now? Well...listen, we're trying, OK? The best of what Canada has in goal is tricky. Stuart Skinner had the best year of Canadian goalies in 2022-23 (.913 save pct.; 2.75 GAA), but he was a rookie with the Oilers, and who's to say he'll be money by the time the World Cup of Hockey comes around in 2025? We're trusting that he didn't have a lucky first season and that he'll be more than capable of handling the net in the World Cup.
Failing that, we've got veterans ready to go. Marc-Andre Fleury has never played an Olympic game for Canada. Heck, he hasn't played a game for Canada since he was on the World Junior team in 2004. He was a member of the Olympic team in 2010 in Vancouver, but he was the No. 3 goalie behind Brodeur and Luongo. He should be on the 2025 World Cup team no matter what because the honor is well beyond overdue, but if he's starting it might get a little too interesting, as he'll be 40 years old.
Darcy Kuemper is our other veteran because he's sneakily been a very good goalie throughout his career, has won a Cup and has played for Canada at World Championships on two different occasions. That this team has two Cup-winning goaltenders should be great, but why doesn't it feel so great?
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