The finalized rosters for the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) World Championship have been released and included are four Sharks prospects who will head to Denmark to represent their home countries. The tournament begins today.
Rudolfs Balcers will play for Latvia, Noah Rod will represent Switzerland, Manny Wiederer will play for Germany, and Radim Simek will skate for the Czech Republic. Balcers, Wiederer, and Simek played the season with the San Jose Barracuda, while Rod played most of the season for Genève-Servette in the Swiss professional league and finished the season in San Jose, adding nine games with the Barracuda.
Balcers, 21, scored 48 points in his 67 games this season for the Barracuda, a 0.72 point-per-game pace. He took just a hair under 2.5 shots on goal per game. At 5v5, Balcers scored an estimated 1.4 primary points per 60 minutes, according to prospect-stats.com.
Wiederer, 21, added 16 points in 51 games, shooting 2.2 times per game. At 5v5, Wiederer collected an estimated 0.93 primary points per hour of ice time.
Simek, a 25-year-old defender, played in 67 games and added 27 points, a solid 0.4 point-per-game pace. Those numbers represent a rate of 0.78 estimated primary points per 60 minutes of 5v5 ice time.
Rod, 21, scored nine points in 25 NLA games and four points in nine games with the Barracuda.
Balcers has a good shot at making the big club during training camp to begin next season and will likely split his time between the AHL and NHL. Wiederer is unlikely to make the big-league club. Simek’s right-handed shot makes him a potential candidate to replace Dylan DeMelo should the team decide to move on, though Nick DeSimone and Tim Heed present obstacles to that roster spot. Noah Rod prefers to spend his time in Switzerland, where he does not appeared to have progressed, production-wise.
The NHL has a schedule of televised games, here. We’ll attempt to keep up with the prospects as they progress through the tournament.
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