Just when you thought there was nothing going in the hockey world, the 2025 World Junior Summer Showcase is here for you to enjoy. Set to begin at 11 AM local time this morning in Minneapolis, Minnesota thru Saturday, August 2nd, the best of the best under-20 hockey players from the United States, Canada, Sweden and Finland will be competing against each other and against their teammates as they all look to make a case for a spot on their respective country’s 2026 World Junior Championships roster later this year.
If you needed anymore convincing on why you should pay attention to the seven-day showcase, the Kings are well represented this year with six prospects suiting up for their country. Consisting of four American skaters and two international goalies, we’ll be seeing multiple games of King-on-King competition. With five of the six Kings prospects coming from the 2025 draft, Henry Brzustewicz (USA), Kristian Epperson (USA), Caeden Herrington (USA), Brendan McMorrow (USA) and Petteri Rimpinen (FIN) will each be taking the ice this week in Minnesota along with 2024 draft pick Carter George (CAN).
USA
Hosts of this event since 2004, the United States will have a 42-man roster coming to the showcase. They’ll be separated into two teams, USA White and USA Blue, for the first two days of the showcase and will each face off against Sweden and Finland before the roster is condensed into one team. That team will play three final games against each nation’s chosen final roster.
The Kings’ top selection from last month’s draft, defenseman Henry Brustewicz, will represent the Stars and Stripes this coming week despite currently being a member of the OHL’s London Knights in Canada. Born in Washington, Michigan, Brzustewicz heads into the Summer Showcase used to playing against the top competition in his age group. Fresh off of OHL and Memorial Cup championships against the best Canadian junior teams, Brzustewicz should be familiar with the intense atmosphere and high-paced gameplay, and will be looking to put his name into the conversation for a spot on the United States’ World Juniors roster come December.
At 6-foot-2, 203 pounds, the self-described two-way, puck moving, physical, and opportunistic offense defenseman that models his game after Alex Pietrangelo will begin the showcase on the USA Blue team alongside his three other members of the Kings recent draft class. Certainly, a lucky break for the Kings development and management staff.
Defenseman Caeden Herrington will join Brzustewicz and will be looking to show off the goalscoring abilities he showcased this past season in the USHL, where he led all defensemen in the league in that category. More importantly, Herrington will attempt to take the defensive lessons he learned from development coaches Matt Greene and Sean O’Donnell at development camp earlier this month and implement them into his game. Self admittedly an offensive defenseman that needs to focus on being a better, tougher and harder defender, Herrington raved about the lessons he had been learning from the two coaches at development camp.
“Greeny and OD have huge hockey minds, and they really know the defensive side of the game. It’s been good to kind of hear from them and learn from them because of how many years they played in the NHL. They’ve lived it. It’s just been an awesome experience to be able to kind of learn from the best, and learn some things in some areas of my game that need work… Even already, they have been able to do a tremendous job helping all the guys here with balancing out their game. They really know the defensive zone well, and I think that marries my game well. Things like being harder in front of the net and some little details, like stick details and closing plays off and stuff that we worked on all week. It’s been really good to be out here and work with those guys, and I think it’ll only help me continue my trajectory and move forward in my career.”
Herrington, the 6-foot-2, 205-pound Vermont native will have a golden opportunity to show off his skillset on both ends of the ice over the next seven days. Following the showcase, Herrington will return to his home state and get ready for his freshman season at the University of Vermont.
The final two Americans seem to have been joined at the hip for the past few seasons, and now into the future. They spent last season apart, with Kristian Epperson playing for the OHL’s Flint Firebirds and Brendan McMorrow for the USHL’s Waterloo Black Hawks. Now the two recent Kings draft picks are back together. Both are familiar with putting on the red, white and blue, as Epperson and McMorrow each spent the 2022-24 seasons in Ann Arbor, Michigan playing for the U.S. National Team Development Program. They helped the Americans win gold at the 2022 World Under-17 Hockey Challenge, while McMorrow was also a member of USA’s gold-medal winning teams at the 2024 IIHF U18 World Championship and 2024 World Junior-A Challenge.
Now they’re reunited as members of the Kings organization and incoming freshmen at the University of Denver, where they will play together in the fall. The duo is together again in Minneapolis ,but only one of the two will be taking part of the on-ice competition. McMorrow is unfortunately sidelined with an injury.
Neither draft pick was able to attend this year’s development camp in El Segundo due to Denver’s freshman schedule, as we touched on earlier this month.
Canada
The Kings lone Canadian prospect at the summer showcase is an important one. Goaltender Carter George will put his nation’s sport the maple leaf after a disappointing finish at last year’s World Junior Championships. Despite posting the best numbers among goalies in the last year’s tournament with a .936 save percentage and 1.76 goals against average, George and Canada were bounced in the quarterfinals after being upset by Team Czechia, whose roster featured fellow Kings prospects Jakub Dvorak and Vojtech Cihar.
Projected to return as the starter at World Juniors this year for the Canadians, George has an opportunity to further make his case for the job. He’s been turning heads since the day he was drafted in the second round of the 2024 draft, and for good reason too. Last season, George carried an undermanned Owen Sound Attack team into the OHL playoffs while facing the most shots in the league (1,665 shots, equating to 35.4 shots faced per game).
Like the United States, Canada is also bringing fielding two teams to begin the showcase. As it currently stands, it is currently unknown if the 6-foot-1, 190-pound netminder will begin the showcase on Team Canada Red or Black, as their rosters have not been announced.
Finland
Like George, the Kings sixth and final Summer Showcase invitee will also be looking to further solidify his starting job in net. Petteri “Texas Pete” Rimpinen will be in goal for Team Finland after carrying his team to the gold medal game at the 2025 World Juniors. A silver medalist after falling to the Americans in overtime in that gold medal game, Rimpinen’s game has taken off in the last year. Not only did Rimpinen go 5-1-1 with a .933 SV% and a 2.34 GAA during last year’s World Juniors, but the 6-foot, 176-pound Kirkkonummi, Finland native also won the starting job on his Finnish team, Kiekko-Espoo, in the SM-Liiga at the age 18 and did more than hold his own. Posting a .912 SV% and a 2.35 GAA across 40 games last season, Rimpinen has put himself in prime position for lots of ice time and opportunity for development and success moving forward.
You can find the seven-day showcase schedule here. Per USA Hockey, the World Junior Summer Showcase will feature 11 international games with all games from the showcase being streamed live at USAHockeyTV.com.
Following the 2025 World Junior Summer Showcase, the next time we’ll see the U20 international teams face off against each other will be at the 2026 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship. The tournament will take place Dec. 26, 2025, through Jan. 5, 2026 at the Treasure Island Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota and at 3M Arena at Mariucci in Minneapolis, home of the University of Minnesota men’s hockey program.
