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On Wednesday, June 16th, 2022, Hockey Canada announced its training camp roster for the upcoming Hlinka-Gretzky Cup - including four players from Oakville; all former Oakville Rangers.
The Hlinka Gretzky Cup is an annual international ice hockey tournament that features some of the world's best players under the age of 18.
The tournament will take place from Sunday, July 31 to Saturday, August 6 in Red Deer, Alberta. The players on the training camp roster will start training camp on Wednesday, July 20 and management will make final cuts in time for the start on July 31.
The first player is Calum Ritchie of the Oshawa Generals. This year for the Generals, Calum scored 19 goals and 26 assists, totalling 45 points in 65 games. He was also a big playoff performer for Oshawa scoring seven points in six games.
The second player is Matthew Soto of the Kingston Frontenacs. Matthew scored six goals and 19 assists totalling 25 points in the regular season. He was able to score four points in 11 playoff games.
Next is Nick Lardis of the Peterborough Petes. Lardis scored 18 goals for the Petes along with 19 assists totalling 37 points in 63 games.
Last but not least is Luke Misa of the Mississauga Steelheads. Misa scored four goals and 22 assists for 26 points in 62 games for Mississauga and scored five points in 10 playoff games for the team.
Nick talked about how excited he was to go to camp and potentially make the team: "I am very excited for the opportunity to go to the camp for the u18 Hockey Canada team. I've been watching the U-18s and World Juniors for a long time and it has been a dream of mine to play for Team Canada."
He also talked about "how cool it will be" to play with his old Ranger teammates. "Reuniting with my Oakville Rangers teammates will be awesome, it's been a long time since we last played together. So it will be awesome to play with or against them at the camp."
The tournament will run similar to previous years, there will be two groups with four teams.
A round-robin will start the tournament where all teams will play three different teams before the playoffs begin, once that is done the top two teams from each group will compete in the semi-finals and the winners of those games will go to the Gold medal game and the losers of those games will go to the Bronze medal game.
Canada will be in group A with Slovakia, Sweden, and Switzerland while group B will consist of the United States, Finland, Germany and, Czechia.
All games will be shown on TSN in July. The games can’t get here fast enough.
