Great goaltending, great games, not so great teams.

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Welcome to my second ramblings in as many days. Instead of covering a lot of things broadly, I am going to take a deeper look at the two games today as well as the Leon Draisaitl escapade. I focus mainly on drafted NHL prospects; Brendan Ross will be posting his own ramblings in the days to come with much more of an emphasis on 2015 and 2016 eligibles.

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Denmark and Switzerland played a massively, unexpectedly entertaining game filled with highlights, great plays, sloppy plays and an improbable, unprecedented win.

Updates on some World Junior Standouts and some Angusing candidates.

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I am happy to be back from a vacation that had a surprising and complete lack of access  to cable or internet. While it was nice to unplug, it couldn’t have come at a worse time! I missed the start of one of the best tournaments in all of sports. The World Juniors is arguably a better display of pure skill than any other NHL tournament; highly skilled players bearing the weight of a country, and playing before NHL coaches can extract every last ounce of wild abandon and emotion in favour of silly things like “defensively sound hockey” and “clichés that not even Toronto media can twist into controversy”.

Updating the prospect action of the World Junior Championships with a close look on Leafs William Nylander, Predators Kevin Fiala, Canada's Connor McDavid and American Jack Eichel...

Sunday, December 28^th

Two days in at the 2015 World Junior Championships and we’ve already witnessed some stellar performances. Lucky for me, I have tickets to every game taking place in Toronto featuring Sweden, Russia, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Denmark and thanks to PVR, I have been able to catch the Pool A action, including Canada, US, Slovakia, Germany and the defending 2014 gold medalists – Finland.

As good as it would be to watch Canada and USA through the round robin, I am thankful for the teams and their talents participating in Toronto. Having the chance to watch William Nylander (Sweden/Maple Leafs, 8^th overall in 2014), Nikolaj Ehlers (Denmark/Jets, 9^th overall in 2014), Kevin Fiala (Switzerland/Predators, 11^th overall in 2014), Jakub Vrana (Czech Republic/Capitals, 13^th overall in 2014) and AHL star David Pastrnak (Czech Republic/Bruins, 25^th overall in 2014). With each of them possessing similar offensive skills featuring crafty puck skills and out-out-of-this-world creativity, all five of them have been a treat to watch. More on these players a little later.

Fortunately, the long list of exciting participants doesn’t end there as plenty of 1995s have proved (and will continue to prove) to be dangerous throughout this tournament. From Group B action in Toronto, here are a few drafted players (outside of the ones mentioned above) who have stood out for me … Nikolay Goldobin (Russia/Sharks), Pavel Buchnevich (Russia/Rangers), Sergey Tolchinsky (Russia/Hurricanes, signed), Vladislav Kamenev (Russia/Predators), Oliver Bjorkstrand (Denmark/Blue Jackets), Ondrej Kase (Czech Republic/Ducks), Mirco Mueller (Switzerland/Sharks), Noah Rod (Switzerland/Sharks), Jacob de la Rose (Sweden/Canadiens), Linus Soderstrom (Sweden/Islanders), Robert Hagg (Sweden/Flyers), Lucas Wallmark (Sweden/Hurricanes), Axel Holmstrom (Sweden/Red Wings), Adrian Kempe (Sweden/Sweden) and Oskar Lindblom (Sweden/Flyers).