Four more members of the St. Louis Blues have been added to the rosters for September’s World Cup of Hockey: David Backes, Alex Pietrangelo, Colton Parayko and Dmitrij Jaskin. The eight teams in the World Cup finished up their rosters on Friday.
Backes will represent the United States, Pietrangelo was picked for Team Canada, Jaskin will represent the Czech Republic and Parayko will play for Team North America, a team that is for players aged 23 and under.
“Selecting the second group of players was more difficult than anticipated,” Team North America general manager Peter Chiarelli said. “We had a couple of the younger guys surge in the last segment. We wanted to ensure we had experience but at the same time, we also had to maintain our speed.”
“The Captain” Backes, who was on the past two Olympic teams for Team USA, scored 21 goals and notched 24 assists this season for the Blues, to go along with a phenomenal postseason in which he had seven goals and seven assists.
Pietrangelo, had seven goals and 30 assists in the regular season for the Blues. A member of Team Canada in the 2014 Olympics, he added two goals and eight assists in the playoffs while playing an average of 28 minutes, 48 seconds per postseason game, the fifth-highest total in the postseason and the most by a player who got to the conference finals. He played in a total of 576:06 in the playoffs, which turned out to be 84 minutes more than anyone else.
In his rookie season, Parayko notched nine goals and 24 assists and 79 games, working his way up to one of the best defense-men on the Blues.
As for Jaskin, he represented the Czech Republic at the 2011 under-18 world juniors and at the 2012 and 2013 world juniors. In 2013, he led the Czech Republic with a total of six points (three goals, three assists) in six games played.
Kevin Shattenkirk, Jay Bouwmeester, and Robby Fabbri were considered for Team North America, but didn’t make the cut.
Vladimir Tarasenko (Team Russia), Alexander Steen (Team Sweden) and Jori Lehtera (Team Finland) were among the original 16 players chosen by their respective countries.
