Epperson, McMorrow Set For 2025 World Junior Summer Showcase

DENVER – The journey for incoming freshmen Kristian Epperson and Brendan McMorrow to make Team USA for the 2026 IIHF World Junior Championship will get underway this weekend in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
 
The University of Denver hockey duo are amongst 42 gamers general and 11 from the National Collegiate Hockey Conference which were invited to take part within the 2025 World Junior Summer Showcase, a week-long analysis camp that options practices and 10 complete exhibition video games in preparation for this 12 months’s World Juniors in Minnesota from Dec. 26, 2025 to Jan. 5, 2026.
 
The summer season camp begins at this time, Friday, July 25 with practices and concludes with video games on Saturday, Aug. 2. Canada, Finland and Sweden may also be sending groups this week for exhibitions and practices at Ridder Arena on the campus of the University of Minnesota.
 
While each American on the Summer Showcase is on USA Hockey’s radar to make the workforce, not each participant might be invited once more to coaching camp in December earlier than the ultimate workforce is introduced. Additionally, if an under-20 participant wasn’t invited to the Summer Showcase, they’re nonetheless eligible to be invited to coaching camp in 5 months and make Team USA’s roster for the World Junior Championship, which might be held on U.S. soil for the primary time since 2018 in Buffalo, New York.
 
Both Epperson and McMorrow are accustomed to sporting the crimson, white and blue, as they every performed for the U.S. National Team Development Program for 2 seasons from 2022 to 2024. Both gamers helped the Americans win gold on the 2022 World Under-17 Hockey Challenge, with McMorrow additionally being a member of USA’s gold-medal successful squads on the 2024 IIHF U18 World Championship and 2024 World Junior-A Challenge.
 
Denver Richard and Kitzia Goodman Hockey Head Coach David Carle had led the Americans on the previous two World Juniors and received the gold medal every year, marking the first-time ever that the United States received back-to-back championships on the U20 match. University of Minnesota head coach Bob Motzko, who additionally received gold in 2017 with the USA National Junior Team, is main this 12 months’s squad.
 
Overall, the U.S. has received a medal in eight of the final 10 IIHF World Junior Championships, one of the best medal stretch in U.S. historical past. The eight medals embody 4 golds (2025, 2024, 2021, 2017), one silver (2019) and three bronze (2023, 2018, 2016). The United States has received 28 of its final 32 video games during the last 5 World Junior Championships, with a trio golds (2025, 2024, 2021) and one bronze (2023) medal throughout that point.
 

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