Utah Mammoth fans are facing a dilemma: Do they cheer for their country, or do they cheer for the three Mammoth first-round picks playing for their rivals?

Tij Iginla, Cole Beaudoin and Caleb Desnoyers are all on Team Canada’s selection camp roster for the upcoming World Junior Championship, and if you watched the 4 Nations Face-Off in February, you’re familiar with how heated the Canada/USA rivalry can get.

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With only four cuts to be made, it’s likely that all four of those players end up on Canada’s main squad. Team USA, on the other hand, did not invite any Utah prospects to its camp.

“They better cheer for us,” Desnoyers joked in an interview with the Deseret News on Tuesday. “They’re Mammoth fans. We’re all good prospects for Utah.

“Hopefully they’ll be cheering on the boys. Maybe when we play the States they might cheer for the States, but we’ll make sure we show them that we’re the best team.”

Desnoyers expressed that while he’s happy to make the selection camp roster, the job is far from finished.

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“Obviously it’s a great achievement for me, but it’s really (just) the start,” he said. “(I) still want to make my place and show that I’ll have an impact on the team to help them win gold.”

Desnoyers’ coach, Gardiner MacDougall, will be an assistant coach on Team Canada’s bench. The pair won the QMJHL championship together last season with the Moncton Wildcats, and they’re currently in second place in the Eastern Conference.

A number of guys on the Mammoth’s current NHL roster made names for themselves at the World Juniors. Most notably, Dylan Guenther scored the OT winner in the gold medal game in 2023.

Guenther, of course, has only continued to score clutch goals in the NHL, with game-winners in more than 10% of the games he’s played — most recently an OT winner against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Sunday.

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Other Mammoth gold medalists include Barrett Hayton, Lawson Crouse and Clayton Keller, while Logan Cooley, Nick Schmaltz, Mikhail Sergachev and Kailer Yamamoto all have silver medals in their respective trophy cases.

This is a tournament for the best of the best, and there are dozens of examples of eventually successful NHL players who made names for themselves there.

Utah Mammoth prospects at the 2026 World Juniors

Some countries, including Czechia, have announced their full rosters. Others are still in the selection camp phase. Here’s the full list of Mammoth prospects who are in the running:

Tij Iginla, Team Canada (drafted first round, 2024).

Cole Beaudoin, Team Canada (drafted first round, 2024).

Caleb Desnoyers, Team Canada (drafted first round, 2025).

Max Pšenička, Team Czechia (drafted second round, 2025).

Veeti Väisänen, Team Finland (drafted third round, 2024).

Štěpán Hoch, Team Czechia (drafted third round, 2025).

Ludvig Johnson, Team Switzerland (drafted sixth round, 2025).

Beaudoin, Väisänen and Johnson all played in the tournament last year. Väisänen went home with a silver medal around his neck, while Beaudoin and Johnson left with nothing but hopes for a better tournament the following year.

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What is the World Junior Championship?

The World Junior Championship, most commonly referred to as the World Juniors, compares in magnitude to college basketball’s NCAA Tournament.

Like March Madness, the tournament is mainly comprised of amateurs. Many of them will become NHL stars, but there are even more for whom this will be the peak of their careers.

Unlike March Madness, players represent their countries at the tournament. There’s an extra level of pride and responsibility that comes with wearing your country’s colors on the international stage, and that translates into intensity on the ice.

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The tournament rotates host countries every year. This is the first year since 2018 that it’ll be held in the United States, and the first time since 2005 that it will be in Minnesota.

As always, it begins the day after Christmas. See the IIHF’s website for the full schedule.