Sp, who are the top guns on D in this team (for WJC pool): Honka (is he a lock?), Ristolainen (is he concussioned?), Pokka?
Pokka will obviously be the no. 1 point D, so not having him would be mental.
Honka is probably going to be there. RR too if he heals in time. But picking these two for pool is a bit risky, since there's no guarantee right now that they'll be there.
It's a deep class what comes to D, there are plenty of equally good-to-decent picks to make here - so predicting who's going to make the final cut is actually kinda hard. Besides Pokka, that is.
I just hope they can handle the situation mentally. Neither one of them was expected to be a starter in FEL before the season, now they're both in the top 5 goalies in the league. Now the people around them are expecting things from them and they know there's another goalie on the bench who's capable of being just as good.
Not exactly true. Don't know about Husso, but Saros has pretty much been groomed for greatness all year long. HPK had not a clear starter at the beginning of the season but pretty much an equal tandem in two young goalies, Saros and Tuohimaa, with both given equal minutes. So while there was challenge, it's not like he came completely out of the blue and had to fight tooth and nail to grab the starter spot. Besides, Saros has also pretty much been the go-to-guy in the lower NT age classes for a while now.
When Kivi left him off the U20 tournament some weeks ago, he flat out told him that he's a lock for the WJCs and their designated starter. If there's pressure, it's coming from the fact that Husso has emerged as such a strong challenger. Oh well, at least Saros won't get complacent.