A Look at the Four Goalies Looking to Represent Canada at the 2024 World Junior Championships
Being apart of the goalie selections for Team Canada’s WJC camp and being a goalie selected to camp are thankless positions to hockey fans. There’s no pressure greater than being a Canadian goalie or picking Canadian goalies in the men’s game. Every single men’s international tournament it’s a free space on the BINGO card that goaltending will be the topic of discussion before camp even begins. No position is analyzed closer than the goalies of Canada which is somewhat amusing when the vast majority of the hockey community likes to say they know nothing about goaltending. Hope everyone is strapped in as we head into another hockey news cycle of can insert Canadian goalie here not lose Canada the Gold Medal at the WJC’s that won’t end until said goalie is wearing a Gold Medal.
Around the start of November I picked six goalies who I believed Canada would be looking at and who they should be looking at. They selected 3/6 of those goalies to make the camp roster in Dom DiVincentiis, Scott Ratzlaff, and Mathis Rousseau. The fourth goalie is the one who didn’t make my WJC candidates piece in Samuel St-Hilaire. I do want to make clear that I very much understand the reasons why each goalie was selected and all four goalies definitely haven’t backed into one of these camp spots, they’ve worked hard to be here. For the purpose of this piece we’re going to walk through all four selections and give my thoughts on each selection to help everyone figure out why each goalie is on this camp roster.
Mathis Rousseau
It's extremely rare for an undrafted goalie to make Team Canada and even more rare to lead the team to a Gold Medal. That’s what Thomas Milic did last year and now Team Canada is hoping to capture that magic again in Mathis Rousseau. The undrafted 19yo goalie has been the best goalie in the QMJHL and you could obviously argue from there he’s been the best goalie in the whole CHL. This follows the model Canada set last year where they brought the best goalie to training camp in Thomas Milic and he won the no. 1 job leading to a Gold Medal for Team Canada.
If you’ve checked on my Twitter feed or read the “Goalie Candidates for Canada’s WJC camp” you’d know I’ve been fine with this decision before the camp roster was announced. Rousseau isn’t accidentally putting up some of the best numbers in the CHL and putting himself in line to be on another big stage (Memorial Cup) in May. Rousseau is a skilled goalie who moves well and sees the puck well. Generally you can trust him to have good positioning too. The main difference between Rousseau and Milic which is why I haven’t been nearly as onboard the Rousseau hype train as I was on the Milic one last year is that Rousseau doesn’t have Milic’s overall agility/quickness. This is a problem as he’s going to be more vulnerable to be caught on recoveries on missed shots or rebounds. There’s legitimate concern that Rousseau just doesn’t have the ceiling Milic had.
Considering the four goalies brought to camp it’s hard not to like Mathis Rousseau’s chances at making the team. You can confidently just put him on the roster or at least I would as there’s not enough competition to knock him out of the no. 3 spot and probably not one of the top two spots.
Scott Ratzlaff
If you’ve been paying attention to the discourse surrounding Team Canada or are a semi-serious fan of Canadian junior hockey it’s not hard to notice that this years version is going to be lacking a lot of the elite talent we’ve seen previously especially compared to last year. For the 2023 Team Canada WJC squad Thomas Milic’s job was hold the fort while the offense got warmed up and eventually wins the game. He did that perfectly coming up big in all three playoff games. This year the job is going to be different, they’re going to need a goalie that can be a Trey Augustine or Adam Gajan becoming a serious factor in stealing a game. If you’ve followed along with my thoughts on this you’d know I had two goalies I believed with the potential necessary to pull that job off, Carson Bjarnason and Scott Ratzlaff.
Coming into this season Ratzlaff has built an impressive resume. On a WHL Championship team he put up great numbers in a no. 2 role, when Thomas Milic left for the WJC’s Ratzlaff stepped up proving nearly the same level of consistency, Ratzlaff proved to be the perfect fit for a dominant Hlinka Cup winning team, and in the CHL Top Prospects game Ratzlaff took on Connor Bedard several times 1v1 coming out on top every time. He’s the most skilled goalie in the group and the most agile as well. He’s got a great eye for the puck, he’s somehow able to move in the crease like a figure skater using his edges and plays a smart game. Where he tends to run into issues as we’re seeing with on a team like a rebuilding Seattle Thunderbirds team is Ratzlaff can get into trouble by feeling the need to react too quickly. If Ratzlaff can find the patient he had last year and apply it to this year’s Team Canada he’ll excel.
Ratzlaff is the only 18yo at camp and Team Canada typically doesn’t like taking 18yo goalies unless they have a lot of pedigree behind them such as Zach Fucale or Carter Hart. I’m so thrown off by the camp selections I don’t know what management there is thinking. Like I said above Ratzlaff has the highest potential here and is the best chance Canada has at being tournament Top Goalie. I’d 100% put him as one of my two playable goalies and give him the opportunity to take the no. 1 job. I think at the very least Canada brings him along as the no. 3 for what they’d call experience.
Dom DiVincentiis
At the start of the season if you’d asked about Dom DiVincentiis’ chances at making the Canadian WJC team I’d have put those odds extremely high. Since coming back from injury I’d have put his odds at close to zero as we’re not seeing the DiVincentiis that dominated the OHL last season and carried that play into this season before being hurt. Just like Canada brought Ben Gaudreau last year much to the surprise of everyone as his numbers didn’t look great that season Canada seems to be once again giving a camp spot to someone they promised one too before the season started. This is the camp selection that honestly confused me the most.
Like I mentioned above DiVincentiis was a top 2 goalie in the OHL last season and dominated the league alongside Eastern Conference rival Michael Simpson. He put himself clearly as the frontrunner to a spot on Canada’s WJC team through his results and play. Then coming into this season he’s not putting up the same dominating stats he put up last season but his first 11 games were still great, top 5 in the OHL. His numbers then took a downturn and within a few games he’s out with an injury. He’s come back and his results have only gotten worse. DiVincentiis is in a worse statistical place now than the much maligned Ben Gaudreau was last season. You can see why Canadian management likes DiVincentiis as an option though because when he’s at his best he provides a very easy to play in front of style and he’s very consistent in doing so. If Canada’s plan at the WJC’s is to play defensively to DiVincentiis’ strengths and are able to execute successfully he’s going to do well. It’s the WJC’s though and defensive play is certainly optional which can make life difficult even for DiVincentiis at his best because he just doesn’t have much agility to his game. If the game gets chaotic he noticeably struggles to keep up with the play both mentally and physically.
I do wonder if Team Canada management knows something about DiVincentiis’ health that the general public doesn’t know and expects him to be back to 100% before the WJC’s start. In a year though where there’s been no Canadian goalie to really step up and make themselves the obvious no. 1 option it would feel very odd to bring in a clearly not 100% DiVincentiis hoping that he’ll get healthy in time for the tournament or he’s good enough despite the injury. I’m open to being proven wrong and maybe this is exactly what DiVincentiis needs to get back to 100%. If this doesn’t work out it feels like a high risk, low reward move. As has been mentioned before this Canadian WJC team has different needs in net and I think a DiVincentiis at 100% would be very good in a 2017 Connor Ingram role I don’t know if his playstyle is a great match for WJC play. The voice inside my head says why else bring him if it’s clear he’s not playing his best if his spot on the team isn’t already secured. Guess we’ll just have to see.
Samuel St-Hilaire
Last but not least is Samuel St-Hilaire who I honestly know the least about which is why he’s being talked about last. For the most part Team Canada has followed the blueprint they set out last year when it came to their WJC camp. If Dom DiVincentiis is Ben Gaudreau and Mathis Rousseau is Thomas Milic that leaves Samuel St-Hilaire as the William Rousseau of the group. Definitely don’t hate that sort of thinking from Team Canada management. St-Hilaire has been having a great year, he’s right on the tail of Mathis Rousseau, and why not bring him to camp to see what he has to offer just in case.
St-Hilaire made his QMJHL debut last season at the age of 18 and did rather well for himself. You weren’t going to mistake him for a no. 1 goalie in the QMJHL at the time but he outplayed Jakob Robillard to the point where when the highly ranked Sherbrooke Pheonix were looking to upgrade in net they moved Robillard out while keeping St-Hilaire to support Olivier Adam. It was a good move as when Sherbrooke was facing off against the Halifax Mooseheads in the Final Four and they blew a 3-0 series lead with Olivier Adam in net, Sherbrooke went to the rookie St-Hilaire for Game 7. Sherbrooke still lost but St-Hilaire only allowed a single goal so hard to pin the series loss on him. This season St-Hilaire is proving that confidence to have been the right choice as he’s nipping at Mathis Rousseau’s heels for the QMJHL best goalie spot. He’s not a goalie I’ve seen a lot of but from what I have seen and from the results he’s put up it’s not a huge surprise he’s at camp. He honestly fits into the same general play style that Rousseau and DiVincentiis are going to bring in that all three of them really focus on their positioning, have good mobility, and are just consistent. What would concern me about St-Hilaire is his inner edges just aren’t up to WJC levels especially when it comes to recoveries. It’s concerning thinking about how he'll react to the chaos bound to happen at the WJC’s.
Just like William Rousseau last year the thinking I get with this selection is unless he comes in and blows away his goalie competition St-Hilaire’s chance at making the team is very small. What he has going in favour of him is he’s shown he can handle being the goalie a winning team in the QMJHL needs and he’s also 19yo which Team Canada management loves. At the very least for St-Hilaire it’s great recognition of the season he’s having. Very few goalies get this opportunity and experience.
Final Thoughts:
It's extremely easy to criticize the goalie selections sitting at a laptop (too broke for a half decent PC) with nothing really on the line here when people like Justin Pogge know this could really effect his career, good or badly. So it’s not surprising that Pogge and co. saw the ’04 birth year group of goalies and decided to play it safe with every selection with only Scott Ratzlaff being a real bet on potential. With the other three it’s a high floor, low ceiling situation. After these goalie names came out the first thing I did was catch some recent action of Carson Bjarnason and I couldn’t believe they didn’t select him until I realized what was happening here. No one in management or the coaching staff wants to rely on 18yo goalies. Last time they went that direction (IIRC) is Carter Hart in 2017 and that was during one of Hart’s very dominant seasons. With all that in mind I think Canada ends up taking a tandem of Rousseau/Ratzlaff with St-Hilaire as the no. 3 because I’d find it very surprising if they think DiVincentiis is healthy they’re putting him in the tandem at the expense of Ratzlaff most likely.