{"id":590139,"date":"2025-11-24T05:14:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T05:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/590139\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T05:14:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T05:14:16","slug":"top-2026-nhl-draft-prospects-fired-up-for-chl-usa-hockey-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/590139\/","title":{"rendered":"Top 2026 NHL Draft prospects &#8216;fired up&#8217; for CHL, USA Hockey Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The CHL roster includes four American-born players, including A-rated right wing Nikita Klepov (Windsor, OHL; Deerfield Beach, Florida), who won gold at the 2025 Hlinka Gretzky Cup. The other U.S.-born players skating for Team CHL are B-rated goalie Harrison Boettiger (Kelowna, WHL; Wheat Ridge, Colorado), A-rated defenseman Chase Reid (Sault Ste. Marie, OHL; Chesterfield, Michigan), and A-rated forward J.P. Hurlbert (Kamloops, WHL; Allen, Texas).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m excited to meet the U.S. guys playing for Team CHL,&#8221; Lin said. &#8220;I&#8217;m hoping they want to win this game as bad as all the Canadians do, and I know they will. It&#8217;s the CHL, so we want to show that we&#8217;re the better league. I&#8217;m excited to meet all those Americans and the European guys, too.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The NTDP U-18 team has one player listed as an A skater on Central Scouting&#8217;s preliminary players to watch list: defenseman Luke Schairer (6-3, 195). Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, the right-handed shot has five assists in 21 games this season. He&#8217;s committed to BU in 2026-27.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Luke skates really well and moves the puck very effectively, but I&#8217;d like him to do that more consistently,&#8221; Central Scouting associate director David Gregory said. &#8220;I think he has all the tools because he skates well, he&#8217;s strong and can move the puck in transition.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Victor Plante (5-9, 163), who leads the NTDP with 19 points (nine goals, 10 assists) and four power-play goals in 21 games, enters the event as one of seven B-rated U-18 players, or a potential second- or third-round pick. He&#8217;s committed to the University of Minnesota-Duluth.<\/p>\n<p>The format of the games will see teams earn two points for a win and none for a loss, regardless of whether a game ends in regulation, overtime or a shootout. If a game is tied after regulation, teams will play a five-minute 3-on-3 overtime period, followed by a three-round shootout if necessary. If either game is still tied after three players have shot for each team, the shootout will continue in a sudden-death fashion using different players until a team wins the game.<\/p>\n<p>If, after the completion of the second game of the series, the teams are tied at two points each, the teams will play a 3-on-3 20-minute period(s) until a goal is scored to determine the winner of the series.<\/p>\n<p>Team CHL won the inaugural CHL USA Prospects Challenge last season, sweeping the two-game series after a 6-1 win in London, Ontario, and 3-2 victory in Oshawa, Ontario.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The CHL roster includes four American-born players, including A-rated right wing Nikita Klepov (Windsor, OHL; Deerfield Beach, Florida),&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":590140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-590139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115602971927245035","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/590140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}