The United States\u2019 time spent on its home ice was short-lived during the 2026 IIHF World Junior Championship.<\/p>\n
After a promising 3-1 start in the preliminary games, Team USA made a prompt first-round exit, falling to Finland late Friday night. The United States had the second-highest odds of winning the entire tournament, which is being played in Minneapolis, Minn.<\/p>\n
The Americans lost, 4-3, but Boston Bruins prospects James Hagens and Will Zellers picked up right where they had left off in the preliminary round.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Zellers was tied for the most points in the tournament heading into the first round, recording seven points in the first four games.<\/p>\n
He added an assist to his point total Friday, setting up the game-tying goal that forced overtime.<\/p>\n
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Hagens received the primary assist on that same game-tying goal. The Bruins\u2019 first-round pick added two assists in the loss, with the first coming on a power-play goal that gave Team USA the lead in the second.<\/p>\n
After the elimination loss, most of the squad will return to their respective universities.<\/p>\n
For Hagens, this means returning to Boston College to finish his sophomore season before potentially making the jump to the Bruins\u2019 system.<\/p>\n
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Zellers was a USHL standout last year but now attends the University of North Dakota, where he has 15 points as a freshman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United States\u2019 time spent on its home ice was short-lived during the 2026 IIHF World Junior Championship.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5099],"tags":[154,95,5132,530,5,373,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-391500","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-bruins","8":"tag-boston","9":"tag-boston-bruins","10":"tag-bostonbruins","11":"tag-bruins","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-james-hagens","14":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115841363116676138","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}