Roundup of Devils Prospects at the 2023 World Juniors | PROSPECT WATCH

The Devils are slated to have five prospects compete for four different countries at the World Junior Hockey Championship that begins Monday in the Canadian cities of Moncton and Halifax.
Luke Hughes, the Devils fourth overall selection in the 2021 NHL Draft, is the captain of the U.S. team. Hughes's University of Michigan teammate and fellow Devils prospect Seamus Casey has also been named to Team USA.
Additionally, Simon Nemec (Slovakia), Petr Hauser (Czechia) and Topias Vilen (Finland) are all expected to play leading roles for their respective countries.
USA is in Group B and begins play in Moncton on Monday against Latvia. Hughes and Casey will play Nemec and Slovakia two days later in another Group B encounter. The Americans will wrap up pool play on New Year's Eve with a game against Vilen and the Finns.
Hauser's tournament also begins on Monday against Canada, who headline Group A in Halifax. Sweden, Germany and Austria round out Group A.
Hughes and Logan Cooley (Arizona), the third overall pick in the 2022 NHL Draft, are the two most notable players on the U.S. roster.
Casey, taken in the second round by the Devils in Montreal, is expected to play a depth role on defense.

The U.S. are medal contenders but not the favorites, with a handful of other first-round NHL picks and a few draft-eligible players, including forward Gavin Brindley, who plays with Hughes and Casey at Michigan.

Casey and Brindley grew up together in South Florida and are also roommates in Ann Arbor. The childhood friends will look to make their mark this time around but are expected to be leaders on Team USA next year when the tournament moves overseas to Gothenburg, Sweden.
Canada are the defending champions and are playing at home for the third consecutive year. Eight Canadian returnees, plus captain Shane Wright (Seattle), Brandt Clarke (Los Angeles) and Dylan Guenther (Arizona), who have been released from their NHL clubs, will lead the way.
Devils prospect Tyler Brennan, a goaltender taken in the fourth round last summer, was invited to Canada's final evaluation camp but did not make the final roster.
Canada defeated Finland in overtime in Edmonton in August to win gold.
Canada has something else: the top two prospects for the 2023 NHL Draft in Connor Bedard and Adam Fantilli, another Wolverines teammate of Hughes and Casey.
Bedard has been projected for the top spot since he was 16 and dominated the 2021 World U18s as Canada won gold in Dallas that year. Fantilli is enjoying a tremendous freshman season, separating himself from the rest of the pack and is now legitimately chasing Bedard.
This year's draft class is considered strong, especially at the top. Another prospect in that upper-tier is Swedish forward Leo Carlsson. A bit further down - and more in line with where the Devils expect to be selecting this summer in Nashville - is Hauser's Czech teammate, Eduard Sale, Slovakia's Dalibor Dvorsky and American forwards Brindley and Charlie Stramel.
Russian forward Matvey Michkov is another top prospect but inked to a long KHL contract and isn't playing in the tournament due to his country's banishment. Russia, along with Belarus, remain on the sidelines per IIHF expulsion order made in response to the war in Ukraine.
Beyond Canada and the U.S., Finland and Sweden are also expected to have strong teams. The U.S. posted an impressive 5-2 exhibition win over the Finns on Monday.
Hauser's Czechia finished fourth last year, on the strength of beating the U.S. in the quarterfinals and has been boosted by David Jiricek (Columbus) being made available. Sale could be a lottery pick in Nashville this summer and the Czechs should ice a squad that has about a dozen NHL-drafted players.
Nemec is the most notable name on a Slovak roster that is one of the strongest that country has produced. Unfortunately, 2022 No. 1 overall pick Juraj Slafkovsky (Montreal) has not been released, though there remined faint hope that the Canadiens may change course ahead of the Christmas Day roster deadline.
Given the odd-ball nature of last year's rescheduled World Junior - moved from the holiday season to August because of the pandemic's Omnicron flare-up - many of last year's top players were not released by NHL clubs, who preferred to keep them in-house in preparation for last fall's training camp.
Four months later, the opposite has occurred with about half still-eligible NHL players being made available, Nemec chief among them. Their presence, along with Hughes and Cooley, plus the draft notables led by Bedard and Co. have given the 2023 World Junior a certain star power not seen in years.
Perhaps biggest of all, there are no mandates or crowd restrictions. The 2021 World Junior, also in Edmonton, was played in a bubble. The one that followed was abandoned after just a few days and played to near empty buildings until the elimination games when it finally did take place last summer.
This time around, the Atlantic Canada provinces have embraced the event.
The NHL Network is broadcasting the tournament. The medal round begins on Jan. 2 and gold/bronze contests are Jan. 5.