{"id":666346,"date":"2026-05-13T09:13:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T09:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/666346\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T09:13:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T09:13:11","slug":"team-canada-notes-crosby-barzal-mercer-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/666346\/","title":{"rendered":"Team Canada Notes: Crosby, Barzal, Mercer \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sidney Crosby<\/a> will join Team Canada at the IIHF Men\u2019s World Championship tournament, Hockey Canada announced today. Crosby\u2019s decision marks the second consecutive season in which the Penguins\u2019 captain has decided to head to IIHF Worlds. Crosby scored 12 points in eight games at last year\u2019s edition of the tournament, although Canada was upset in the quarterfinals by Denmark. One of the game\u2019s greatest players of all time, Crosby has already represented Canada on numerous occasions. He\u2019s a member of the Triple Gold Club, meaning he has won a Stanley Cup, Olympic gold medal, and IIHF World Championship.<\/p>\n

Crosby joins a Canada roster that is already looking like the strongest in the tournament by a wide margin. The Canadians are set to be captained by 2024 No. 1 overall pick Macklin Celebrini<\/a>. It is unclear if Celebrini will hand over the captaincy to Crosby, who has served as captain for Canada every time he\u2019s represented them over the past decade. If nothing else, it would be quite the sight to see Celebrini, 19, serving as Crosby\u2019s captain. In any case, the announcement is a good sign for Crosby\u2019s health. He briefly left the bench during game five of the Penguins\u2019 first-round loss to the Flyers to get his knee checked, but it appears that he has not suffered an injury of any sort.<\/p>\n

Other notes from Hockey Canada:<\/p>\n

While Canada has added one of the game\u2019s top forwards in Crosby, they\u2019ve also lost another premier NHL forward: Mathew Barzal<\/a>. The New York Islanders star will miss IIHF Worlds as what Hockey Canada describes as \u201ca precaution\u201d due to a \u201cminor, pre-existing injury.\u201d Barzal, who scored 19 goals and 72 points this past season, has played at two prior IIHF Worlds tournaments. He scored eight points in nine games during the 2022 tournament, and had seven points in 10 games at the 2018 championship. He won a silver medal for Canada in 2022 but is still waiting on his first gold.
\nTeam Canada also added another forward from the Metropolitan Division today: Dawson Mercer<\/a> of the New Jersey Devils. Like Barzal, Mercer has also represented Canada at IIHF Worlds on two occasions: first in 2022, and again in 2024. Mercer won a silver medal with Barzal in 2022 and has scored nine points in 19 career games at the World Championships. The 24-year-old can play both center and on the wing, and scored 20 goals and 42 points for New Jersey this past season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sidney Crosby will join Team Canada at the IIHF Men\u2019s World Championship tournament, Hockey Canada announced today. Crosby\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,69758,14322,23908,9725,448,20710,82,13543,5202],"class_list":["post-666346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dawson-mercer","tag-hockey-canada","tag-iihf","tag-mathew-barzal","tag-nhl","tag-sidney-crosby","tag-sports","tag-team-canada","tag-world-championship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}