The IIHF World Championships are often looked at as a lesser international tournament that doesn’t rise anywhere close to the same quality and prestige of the Winter Olympic tourneys when it comes to the sport of hockey, or even to events like the World Cup and highly entertaining 4 Nations Faceoff that the NHL has concocted over the years.
It’s looked at more as the tournament for NHL players not in the Stanley Cup playoffs, young up-and-coming prospects and for guys that tread the line between AHL star players and established NHL roster guys.
But it can still be an extremely useful experience for the players involved and ultimately provides a proving and development ground for young players still looking to cement their reputations at the highest levels of hockey.
And even this season, the World Championships have players like Sidney Crosby, Mack Celebrini, Aleksander Barkov, Roman Josi, and Matthew Tkachuk suiting up for their countries, so it’s high-level hockey.
It worked last spring as a place where Jeremy Swayman could leave behind his struggles of a couple of years ago when he helped lead Team USA to its first World Championship gold medal in 92 years. That golden experience fed directly into this past season in Boston, where he played his way into being a Vezina Trophy finalist while leading the Bruins back into the Stanley Cup playoffs after a one-year hiatus.
“To finally do it, to win a gold medal, it was unbelievable,” said Swayman. “That tournament for me, personally, was a great cap to a year I wanted better from. To just let it go and just play my game again, I found a lot.
“As soon as it gets to that [world championship] playoff atmosphere, a different breed comes out. You just let everything go. You play your game. Because you know there’s a reward at the end of it all.”
There’s a new group of Bruins players at the world championships this season, of course, looking to use that experience as a springboard for next season, but thus far it’s led to some very mixed results for the Black and Gold contingent.
At the top of the list is 21-year-old Fraser Minten, who has absolutely shone as a fourth-line center for Team Canada, with a goal and three points in three games, along with a plus-2 rating. He was Canada’s player of the game in their opening win over Team Sweden, and it’s a credit to him that he was chosen to play center on a Canadian roster packed with center-types at the forward spot.
Fraser Minten on the board for Team Canada as his line continues to dominate at World Championships pic.twitter.com/Wp3t5x0FvG
— Joe Haggerty (@HackswithHaggs) May 16, 2026
Everybody even got a little peek into his personality on the ice, with this interaction with the ref crew, letting them know he’s getting cross-checked without any calls.
Fraser Minten talking to refs like this is a side of him I didn’t know existed https://t.co/r0NwBWeh3r pic.twitter.com/fqzod3uyIP
— Robert Chalmers (@IvanIvanlvan) May 19, 2026
Alex Steeves ended his Bruins season getting back into the Black and Gold lineup at the end of the playoffs, and he’s been excellent for a Team USA group that has struggled without the talent in their lineup of last season’s American team. Steeves has a goal and two points in four games for Team USA and he’s consistently been playing the wing on one of their top two lines to this point in the tournament while being one of their more effective players.
The weekend at Worlds 🌍 pic.twitter.com/KPH1ezBXDr
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) May 18, 2026
Similarly, Mason Lohrei has played a top defensive pairing role for Team USA and has a plus-1 in four games while shouldering a big load for the Americans.
One player that has struggled for Team USA, however, has been 19-year-old James Hagens, as he went scoreless in the first three games while playing the wing on the fourth line, and he was the player bumped out of the lineup when Matthew Tkachuk arrived in Switzerland and helped lead the inconsistent Americans to a desperately-needed shootout win over Team Germany.
Clearly, Hagens was not in a position where it would be easy to be an impactful player for Team USA, and in that way, it was similar to the role he was given with the Bruins during his appearances in the Stanley Cup playoffs. But it also feels very clear, having watched those games, that Hagens is still very much working through the process of being ready to make an impact at the highest levels of hockey.
In that way, these experiences, both at world championships and in the playoffs for the Bruins, will be excellent fuel for Hagens’ further development over the summer as he knows what he needs from a speed, skill, strength, and mental approach standpoint going into next season.
This is what the Bruins were hoping for all along, and in that sense, it is mission accomplished for building Hagens into a former seventh overall pick that can make a tangible impact on Boston’s offense next season.
“Now [Hagens] has the benefit of going to play in the Worlds. That's a longer tournament than people realize. It's going to be a great opportunity. Being part of Hockey Canada and understanding the players that went last year to represent Canada and look at the rosters now, they're all taking an eye towards the World Cup, the Olympics. It's a really competitive tournament,” said Don Sweeney back at the beginning of the month prior to Hagens heading to Switzerland where he’s been joined by Minten, Steeves, Lohrei, Henri Jokiharju, Joonas Korpisalo, Lukas Reichel and Matej Blumel. “He now has a chance to be a part of a locker room of star players on other teams and earn ice time. That's what it's all about. He needs to come and make our team next year.
“It's no different than Fraser [Minten] coming in last year and hitting the reset at the beginning of training camp and saying, hey, come here with the right mindset. Train the right way. Go through all the steps. And that was part of the process in communication with James [Hagens] is realizing that going from A to Z is not an easy path in this league for any young player.”
But one thing that needs to stop is casual hockey fans believing that Hagens' struggles are simply because the players he is skating with can’t keep up with his speed or skill set. This was not true during his time with the Providence Bruins, where he had his moments, but clearly was not a dominant player at the AHL level before being signed to his entry-level contract with Boston.
And it was not true at the NHL level where Team USA has made the same determination that Marco Sturm did during the first round playoff series: At this every moment in their hockey careers, Steeves is more ready to contribute in an impactful way than Hagens while he looks like is thinking his way through his shifts rather than simply reacting and playing with the speed and sure-minded confidence needed to make plays.
That’s why Steeves is playing in a top 6 role for Team USA, and Hagens is currently out of the lineup.
This is no indictment on the 19-year-old Hagens and his extremely bright future with the Boston Bruins. There is no danger that the seventh overall pick is going to be a first-round cautionary tale like Fabian Lysell that’s clearly never going to make it with the Boston Bruins, and there is little doubt that Hagens is going to be anywhere but Boston next season while starting his NHL career.
Hagens is not quite the close-to-finished NHL product that Team USA teammate Porter Martone is as a physically developed 6-foot-2, 210-pound forward with a pro-style flair to his game. Hagens is a speedy, crafty and skilled playmaking forward that probably isn’t going to be a 50-goal scorer but is instead at his peak is likely going to be a 20-30 goal-scoring guy piling up a ton of assists while making the other players around him better for his presence.
But he’s also a guy that still needs to get bigger, faster and stronger while becoming a more effective player against the best players in the world.
All of that bright future can be seen in glimpses right now, but it will need to be there consistently before he can be an impact player for teams like the Bruins, or for Team USA at the IIHF World Championships even in a year when perhaps the Americans didn’t send all their best and brightest available players.
The hope and expectation is that all these spring experiences for Hagens will aid in those final development steps into turning him into the closer-to-finished NHL product he expects to be in Boston next season.