WJC Opens Saturday with Impressive BU Contingent
December 26, 2015 | Men's Ice Hockey
The 2016 IIHF World Junior Championship in Helsinki, Finland, begins Saturday (Dec. 26) and four members of this year's Boston University men's ice hockey team will be taking part in the tournament, representing three different countries.
BU has the largest World Junior contingent of any NCAA team. In fact, no other school has more than two players at the tournament.
Half of the Terriers' defenseman corps is in Finland, as sophomore Brandon Fortunato and freshman Charlie McAvoy made the U.S. National Junior Team and sophomore Brandon Hickey became the first BU player since 1993 to earn a spot on Team Canada.
Freshman centerman Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson made the final roster for Sweden, becoming the first Terrier to ever play for the Junior Crowns.
The tournament includes a fifth player with BU ties as defenseman Chad Krys, who is set to join the Terriers next fall, is the youngest player on Team USA's roster and the third youngest player in the 10-team event. Krys is the son of former Terrier captain Mark Krys.
The U.S., Canada and Sweden are all in Group A. Sweden takes on Switzerland at 9 a.m. ET on Saturday before the feature game takes place at 1 p.m. ET when Team USA faces rival Canada.
This marks the first time in 14 years that the Terriers have World Junior representatives from a country other than the United States. Frantisek Skladany played for Slovakia in the 2002 tournament while Ville Kentala and Petteri Kosimaki represented Finland in 1986 and 1994, respectively. The only other Terrier to make the Canadian squad was Adrian Aucoin in 1993.
This year's quartet is the third-largest BU contingent in WJC history as the 1992 bronze-medal squad from the U.S. had five Terriers while four Americans joined Kosimaki at the 1994 tournament. BU has representatives from three different countries for the first time ever.
Krys was one of only three 1998-born players that made Team USA's preliminary roster for this year's WJC and the other two have also signed national letters of intent to play for the Terriers. Forwards Kieffer Bellows and Clayton Keller did not make the final roster but are expected to be important contributors to the U.S. squad in future years.
