Cole Hutson\u00a0and\u00a0Nick Kempf will travel to Duluth, Minnesota, to participate in Team USA\u2019s training camp ahead of the 2026 World Junior Championship.<\/p>\n
The two Washington Capitals prospects are part of a group of 28 players who were named to the USA\u2019s preliminary roster on Monday. All nations involved in the tournament, which begins later this month, are permitted to bring a final roster of 25 players (22 skaters, 3 goaltenders) to Saint Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota.<\/p>\n
Team USA has won gold at back-to-back tournaments<\/a>, with Hutson leading all players in scoring last year. He was the first defenseman in World Juniors history to do so<\/a>.<\/p>\n Hutson, the 43rd overall selection in the 2024 NHL Draft, had 11 points (3g, 8a) in seven games as an 18-year-old on last year\u2019s team. He is the highest-scoring defenseman in the NCAA this season, recording 18 points (7g, 11a) in 15 games for Boston University.<\/p>\n The Missouri-born blueliner took home the Tim Taylor Award last spring<\/a>, presented to the top NCAA men\u2019s ice hockey freshman. Hutson also dressed in a preliminary game for Team USA<\/a>\u00a0at the senior World Championship in May.<\/p>\n Kempf, a fourth-round pick by the Capitals in 2024, is Notre Dame\u2019s starting goaltender in the NCAA this season. The 19-year-old backstop is 4-9-1 for the Fighting Irish, with a 3.22 goals-against average and a .902 save percentage.<\/p>\n The Chicago native starred for the US at the 2024 Under-18 World Junior Championship, going 5-1 with a 1.89 goals-against average, a .919 save percentage, and two shutouts. The Americans won silver at the tournament, falling 6-4 to Canada in the gold medal game.<\/p>\n The final Team USA roster is expected to be announced by December 24. The team\u2019s first game comes against Germany on December 26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cole Hutson\u00a0and\u00a0Nick Kempf will travel to Duluth, Minnesota, to participate in Team USA\u2019s training camp ahead of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-325906","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}