Matthew Wood makes Canada's World Juniors team

Matthew Wood will be the sixth UConn player to participate in the World Juniors tournament after making Team Canada’s roster on Wednesday. He’s one of just two college players on the squad along with BU’s Macklin Celebrini.

Wood, a native of Nanaimo, British Columbia, leads the Huskies with seven goals, 12 points and 65 shots through 17 games of his sophomore season. He impressed during Canada’s three-day camp, recording a goal, assist and shootout goal against the U-Sports All-Star team on Tuesday and earning praise for his play during the exhibition on Wednesday.

Wood is the first UConn player to represent Canada in World Juniors. Last year, Ryan Tverberg got an invite to camp but didn’t make the cut for the final roster. Other Huskies to play in the tournament include Vlad Firstov and Yan Kuznetsov with Russia in 2021, Jachym Kondelik with the Czech Republic in 2019, Adam Huska with Slovakia in 2016 and 2017, and Tage Thompson with Team USA in 2017.

If Canada can three-peat as champions, Wood will join Thompson as the second UConn player to earn a World Juniors gold medal. Now, head coach Mike Cavanaugh will have to do something he’s never done before: Root for Canada.

“I told the Canadian people when they asked if he could leave, I said, ‘Yeah... I hope he makes the team because it might be the first year I ever root for Canada,’” Cavanaugh said last year when Tverberg was invited to camp.

The tournament, which will be held in Gothenburg, Sweden, begins on Dec. 26. Canada’s first game will come against Finland that day at 8:30 a.m. ET followed by three more preliminary round contests against Latvia (Dec. 27 at 1:30 p.m. ET), Sweden (Dec. 29, 1:30 p.m. ET) and Germany (Dec. 31, 1:30 p.m. ET).

The quarterfinals are set for Jan. 2 followed by the semifinals on Jan. 4 and the championship and bronze medal games on Jan. 5.

UConn will likely be without Wood for two games due to World Juniors: Dec. 31 against Harvard and Jan. 5 at UMass. He should be back in time for the Huskies’ home series with Maine on Jan. 12 and 13 at the XL Center.

The World Juniors will be broadcast on NHL Network and streamed on Fubo in the US while TSN will have all the action in Canada.