With the World Junior Championship 12 days away, Team USA will be without Brock Boeser.
Boeser, selected 23rd overall by the Vancouver Canucks in 2015, underwent wrist surgery Wednesday, which will knock him out of the under-20 junior tournament taking place in Toronto and Montreal from December 26 – January 5.
Currently playing at the University of North Dakota, Boeser is expected to be able to return to the Fighting Hawks lineup in January.
Boeser has seven goals and 16 points in 13 games for North Dakota, but his lingering wrist injury has kept him out of the lineup since American Thanksgiving. The team tried to rest him in hopes he would heal in time to be ready for the WJC, but as it got worse, Boeser had to have surgery.
“The biggest thing is making sure Brock is 100 per cent healthy for the second half of the season,” North Dakota coach Brad Berry told the Grand Forks Herald. “The whole first half he was battling it. He tried to play through his wrist injury and was getting to a point where needing some rest, we thought, would be the best thing for him. It wasn’t progressing to where we wanted it to be or where he wanted it to be.”
The injury was starting to have a negative effect on Boeser’s production. After scoring six goals and 12 points in his first five games, Boeser slowed to one goal and four points in the next eight games.
