While many of Montreal’s prospects will be sitting for a while longer, their top pick from October’s draft will be hitting the ice soon as defenceman Kaiden Guhle was among the 46 players invited to Canada’s World Junior training camp. With the pandemic holding up the start of the junior seasons in the WHL and OHL, the camp will be a long one, beginning in mid-November and lasting a month.
Guhle was picked 16th overall following a strong season with Prince Albert of the WHL. He played in 64 games last year, picking up 11 goals and 29 assists, more than doubling his output from the previous campaign. Having said that, he doesn’t project to be a significant offensive threat at the next level and Canada won’t be looking at him to play that type of role if he makes the team.
With 15 defencemen on the invite roster (14 of which are NHL draft picks), Guhle will have some work cut out for him to lock down a spot on Canada’s back end. At the very least, it’ll be an opportunity to get some good practice reps in against high-quality competition which, considering the alternative (skating and working out on his own), is still a positive.
Canada’s full camp roster can be found here.