To the surprise of absolutely no one who has watched hockey for some or all of the past three seasons, Dallas Stars forwards Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn have been named to the Team Canada preliminary roster for the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, which will be played before next season.
Here is Canada’s full selections from today:
And here is your Team Canada preliminary 16-man World Cup roster: pic.twitter.com/JZQWyiGOaj
— Pierre LeBrun (@Real_ESPNLeBrun) March 2, 2016
This will be Benn’s fourth time playing for Team Canada and his fourth international event. He’s previously donned a maple leaf in the World Juniors, World Championships and 2014 Olympic Games. He won gold at World Juniors and the Olympics.
Seguin had never been selected for Team Canada before last summer’s world championship, where he scored nine goals in 10 games to help lead the Canadians to the gold medal. Jason Spezza was actually the best player on that team with 14 points (six goals, eight assists) and named the best forward of the tournament, but as expected, he was not named to the first part of the uber-deep Canadian squad for the World Cup.
Benn and Seguin are the second and third members of the Stars organization to be named to a national team today, as prospect defenseman Esa Lindell was a bit of a surprise addition to Team Finland this morning. John Klingberg was a very noticable snub from the Swedish roster, which went with fading veteran Niklas Kronwall instead.
Klingberg and other Stars (Ales Hemsky? Valeri Nichushkin? Antoine Roussel?) still have a chance to be added later this summer, as only 16 members of each team were revealed today. The announcement of the Team USA roster finishes off the evening.