The Detroit News’s Connor Eargood headed down to Little Caesars Arena’s BELFOR Training Center on Wednesday, where Team USA’s World Junior Summer Showcase team is holding two practices and a scrimmage ahead of this upcoming week’s World Junior Summer Showcase in Windsor, Ontario.
Prior to heading across the Detroit River to Windsor, Eargood spoke with Michigan State University coach Adam Nightingale, who is helming the Americans’ bench for both the WJSS and the upcoming 2027 World Junior Championship, too:
“There’s a lot of excitement. These guys, give them a ton of credit,” Nightingale said after practice as sweat-soaked players shuffled past for more workouts. “You earn an opportunity to come try out for the team, and I thought they did really well today. I think we worked on some things that we gotta be great at, but it was fun being out there.”
Nightingale and Team USA are holding two practices and a Friday night intrasquad scrimmage to prepare for the World Junior Summer Showcase in Windsor, which starts Sunday and will pit the Americans against the top prospects from Sweden, Finland and Canada over the course of the week.
This is only part of the evaluation process, but it’s still an important one. The goals for Nightingale and his staff are twofold: establish an identity as a team, then find who fits.
“Our job as the coaching staff is to make that identity clear, and then the player’s job is to play to that identity,” Nightingale said. “And this is one part of the evaluation process. The start of the season will be part of it. There might be some kids that aren’t even at the camp that make the team.”
Detroit prospects JP Hurlbert (an incoming freshman for the University of Michigan), Victor Plante (an incoming freshman for the University of Minnesota-Duluth) and Brent Solomon (an incoming freshman for the University of Wisconsin) will all represent the Red Wings at the WJSS, but they don’t have the kind of history at LCA that coach Nightingale does.
Nightingale worked for the Red Wings as both a video coach and then an assistant coach under Jeff Blashill, so he’s quite familiar with his surroundings:
“It’s great to be back,” Nightingale said. “Thankful that they opened it up to us and really gave us full access to the building. I’m super appreciative.”
Eargood continues (paywall), and this is more of a, “These hockey-related activities are going on around us” sort of article as opposed to any sort of attempt to drop a midsummer Red Wings bombshell, but I hope that you give Eargood’s article a read.
It’s very good real, actual hockey stuff taking place here in late July.
