from Terry Jones of the Edmonton Sun,

Last year, there was a “No Scouts Allowed” policy in place.

No general managers. No directors of amateur scouting. No WHL, OHL or QMJHL junior scouts. No NCAA college scouts. No European scouts. No bird dogs. No hockey ops people. Nobody.

This year there are an estimated 150 scouts expected for Edmonton and 120 more for Red Deer, many of them trading tickets for this day or that, this game or that.

“This year it’s pretty spectacular for scouts,” said Edmonton Oilers director of amateur scouting and player development Tyler Wright....

This year more than makes up for last year’s scouting situation at the event which gets underway with a Boxing Day card featuring Russia-Sweden and USA-Slovakia in Red Deer and Finland-Germany and Czechs-Canada in Edmonton.

Over the years, the world junior has become more of a 19-year-old tournament where the GMs go to check out the development of their previous drafts in best-on-best competition than the total scouting festival it used to be.

But this year, it features not only the two generation players in the same 2023 NHL Entry Draft in Canada’s Connor Bedard and Russia’s Matvei Michkov but Slovakia’s Maxim Strbak and Dailbor Dvorsky.

And as for first time draft eligible (2004 and late 2003 born) players, there are a whopping 25 this year.

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