Canada, USA look like early favorites for gold at 2025 World Juniors

It’s only the start of November, but the 2025 IIHF World Juniors tournament is just around the corner. The rosters have yet to be announced, but it should come as no surprise that the frontrunners for the tournament are Canada and the United States, at least in terms of the pool of players they have to choose from.

Daily Faceoff’s prospect analyst Steven Ellis joined Daily Faceoff Live to talk about the World Juniors and how good the Canadian and American teams might be.

Steven Ellis: This is not going to be a shock to anybody, but it looks like Canada and U.S. are the two favorites.

You look at the Canadian team there, we’re expecting a lot of guys with NHL experience, whether it be Jett Luchanko, Easton Cowen, Cal Ritchie, that’s going to be really exciting. There’s going to be a lot of competition for this team. I think Porter Martone is a top three prospect for this year’s draft. I thought maybe he had an outside chance of making this team, but watching him play up close in Brampton with Carson Rehkopf, who should be on this team after making the team last year, I’d be a hard thing to separate those two. A lot of people often question the goaltending, but I don’t think that’s going to be an issue for this team. There’s a lot of good options like Carson Bjarnason and Joshua Ravenbergen.

But then you go look at that American team, and they’ve got James Hagens, the top prospect for 2025. We’re expecting another year of Ryan Leonard and Gabe Perreault, and all three of those guys are just dominating. They’ve got some other key pieces from my last year’s team that won gold like Trey Augustine and Zeev Buium.

Obviously they’re expecting to have them, we don’t have the rosters yet, but those two teams are going to be neck and neck. If we know anything, the Americans want to win in Canada every single time. You want to win anywhere, but going across the border, winning that game on December 31st, and then hopefully winning again on January 5th in the championship game, that’s important for the Americans.

You can watch the full episode here…