Cowan, Yager, Willander set for big roles at this year’s World Juniors
Published
Fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Winnipeg Jets and Vancouver Canucks will have an opportunity to see important pieces of their future playing on the biggest stage in junior hockey in the coming weeks.
Forwards Easton Cowan (Maple Leafs) and Brayden Yager (Jets) will be suiting up for Team Canada, looking to win gold on home soil, while defenceman Tom Willander (Canucks) will look to help Sweden break their 12-year title drought.
Canada will take Finland on Boxing Day while Sweden opens their tournament against Slovakia in Group B.
Easton Cowan – London Knights
Cowan is one of four players on Team Canada returning from last year’s fifth-place finish and looking for redemption.
While he had a goal and an assist in five games last year in a more limited role, Cowan will be counted on for much more this time around.
He finished the 2023-24 season with 34 goals and 96 points, winning the Red Tilson Trophy as OHL MVP and the Wayne Gretzky 99 Award as playoff MVP as he helped the London Knights to the league championship and the Memorial Cup final.
The 19-year-old forward holds the unofficial record for longest point streak in the OHL at 56 games split over two seasons.
“You do not excel the way he does without having significant skills but also the desire to impact the game, and [when] Easton gets out on the ice, he’s another player with this innate sense of what has to happen,” said TSN Director of Scouting Craig Button.
“I call him lower-case Dougie Gilmour. He’s got that type of game. You’re never pushing him out of the game.”
Cowan did not participate in selection camp after taking a big hit in his last OHL game before leaving for camp, but he was skating and is back at practice this week with the team.
Brayden Yager – Lethbridge Hurricanes
Yager has been on the move a lot the past few months.
In August, he was traded from the Pittsburgh Penguins to the Winnipeg Jets in a one-for-one trade with fellow prospect Rutger McGroarty. Yager was drafted 14th overall by Pittsburgh in 2023 and had inked his entry-level contract with the team one month before the trade.
He was on the move again in December, when he was traded in the Western Hockey League from the Moose Jaw Warriors to the Lethbridge Hurricanes, along with teammate Jackson Unger, in a blockbuster trade that saw the Warriors receive three players and six draft picks in return.
Yager was one of a few players who played to expectation at the World Juniors last year with five points in five games and is a candidate to wear a letter for Canada.
“Many teams have players like Brayden Yager on them because there’s no area of the game that’s below Brayden,” said Button. “There’s no area of the game that he’s not going to dive into. He plays the game with an intensity and a skill and understanding that ‘I got to make this play.’
“Brayden is good offensively. He can shoot the puck, make the plays and he can beat you with his skating. But he uses the whole package of these skills to impose himself in the game and to make a difference.”
He had 11 goals and 30 points in 21 games for Moose Jaw before the trade. In two games with Lethbridge before leaving for selection camp, he had one goal and three assists.
Tom Willander – Boston University
The lone non-Canadian on the list, Willander returns to avenge Sweden’s gold-medal game loss to the United States.
Sweden lost 6-2 to the Americans last year on home ice in Gothenburg and their last gold medal win in 2012 is getting further away in the rear-view mirror.
Willander, who drafted 11th overall by the Canucks in 2023, is in his sophomore season in the NCAA at Boston University. The 19-year-old has nine points in 16 games this season.
“He’s the rock on the blueline,” said Button. “He reminds me so much of Charlie McAvoy. Charlie McAvoy, he’s like Drew Doughty-esque, they’re not going to put up these gaudy offensive numbers, but they’re going to do everything in the game that is helpful to winning and necessary to winning, and that’s what Tom is.”
Willander has represented Sweden several times, earning silver medals at the U18s, Hlinka Gretzky Cup and World Juniors.