Team USA recently won the IIHF World Championships for the first time in 92 years after defeating Switzerland in the finals in overtime. Tage Thompson of the Buffalo Sabres scored the overtime winner off the rush. The Detroit Red Wings were well represented at the recent tournament co-hosted by Sweden and Denmark. The young players on the Red Wings had mixed results at the 2025 IIHF World Championships.
Seven Detroit Red Wings played for various countries at the World Championships. Three of them, Lucas Raymond, Simon Edvinsson, and Erik Gustafsson, won a bronze medal as part of Sweden’s World Championship team. Raymond scored five goals and added six assists at the tournament, while Edvinsson had one assist and Gustafsson had seven assists. This is the seventh straight season that a Red Wing earned a medal at the World Championships.
Raymond and Edvinsson are two of the most important Red Wings for the future. Edvinsson was pressed into the Red Wings lineup as part of the top defensive pair for the team alongside Moritz Seider due to the injury of veteran defenseman Jeff Petry. Playing in 78 games during his rookie season, Edvinsson scored seven goals and added 24 assists. In the game that he missed due to an upper-body injury, the Red Wings’ defense struggled.
Seider represented Germany at the tournament as captain of the team. While Germany had a sub-standard tournament, finishing in ninth place of 16 teams, Seider had one assist in seven games for Germany. After a shootout loss to Denmark in the final of group B, Seider said, “I think we came out with a very solid game plan,” he said. “I think we weathered the storm pretty well, defended from the inside out. We knew they were coming out pretty hard, probably, and found a way to get into the game after five or 10 minutes.
“We played overall a very solid game. But if you look at the big picture, scoring one goal probably won’t do it in international hockey, and that’s very frustrating right now.” As a defenseman, Seider cannot be expected to shoulder the offensive load for Germany. Germany scored 20 goals in seven games. This was the ninth-most goals scored by any team in the 2025 World Championships. Germany was eliminated in group play by Switzerland in a shootout
After playing 77 games for the Red Wings during the 2024-25 NHL season, his first as a full-time Red Wing, center Marco Kasper had an impressive showing at the World Championships for Austria. Austria would finish the tournament in eighth place. In those 77 games, Kasper scored 19 goals and added 18 assists for a total of 37 points. Kasper scored four goals and added three assists in seven games for Austria at the tournament.
The Red Wings need to make it back to the Stanley Cup playoffs. This is something that the team has not done since 2010. Todd McLellan will have his first offseason and full season to make this a reality. The experience that Raymond and Edvinsson had for Team Sweden at the World Championships can prove to be very valuable. Having experience on the world stage can prevent the young Red Wings from “giving away” points that McLellan thought the team did towards the end of the 2024-25 NHL season.
ITR 43: It's Winning Time – Inside The Rink
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