Jimmy Snuggerud made his big splash at the 2024 IIHF World Junior Championship on Thursday morning.
Future St. Louis Blues teammate Otto Stenberg said move over buddy!
Snuggerud topped Stenberg in points on the day 4-3, but each netted respective hat tricks for their respective countries in Sweden on Thursday to pace Blues prospects on Day 3.
* USA 11, Switzerland 3 -- Snuggerud wasted little time in popping his hat trick, doing it during a four-goal first period for the United States, which improved to 2-0 in group play with its rout of Switzerland.
Ahead 1-0, Snuggerud scored an unassisted goal at 3:21 to make it 2-0.
Snuggerud struck for his second at 8:11 to make it 3-0 off a feed from Cutter Gauthier.
After Switzerland cut the deficit to 3-1, Snuggerud completed the hat trick at 12:36 on assists from Gauthier and Rutger McGroarty to give USA a 4-1 lead.
And before the period ended, Snuggerud added an assist on Zeev Buium's goal at 18:29 to give USA a decisive 5-1 edge.
Snuggerud, the 23rd pick in the 2022 NHL Draft who has four goals and an assist in two games in the tournament, finished with seven shots on goal and was a plus-3 in 13:07.
* Sweden 5, Germany 0 -- Stenberg, the 25th pick in the 2023 NHL Draft, wanted in on the fun himself after Snuggerud's performance.
The forward scored three of Sweden's first four goals to keep the home side not only unbeaten in group play but unscored upon as well.
Stenberg opened the scoring for the Swedes at 15:48 of the first period on an assist from David Edstrom to make it 1-0.
After Mattias Havelid made it 2-0 in the second period with Blues defensive prospect Theo Lindstein (29th overall pick in the 2023 draft) assisting, Stenberg struck twice in less than three minutes. He would make it 4-0 with his second at 6:16 of the third period.
And hats would be in order for Stenberg when he made it 5-0 at 9:02.
Stenberg was a plus-2 and had five shots in 13:58, while Lindstein, who has three assists in two games, was a plus-3 in 18:16.
Someone benefitted from Doug Armstrong being in the building today when the Blues general manager flew over to take in the tournament beginning today and had some thoughts on the prospects from his conversation with the media Wednesday.
Here's Blues interim coach Drew Bannister after practice on Thursday, before Stenberg's performance.
"I heard this morning that Snuggerud had three goals there this morning, so it's good to see a lot of our prospects doing well overseas right now," Bannister said. "That's a great tournament for those players to be involved with and I think we have seven guys right now, so that's a great thing for the organization to have that kind of depth in that tournament. I think Doug mentioned it's usually a19-year-old tournament and for us to have five or six of them that are 18-year-olds, that's pretty impressive for that tournament."
Bannister did get a close up view of a number of the Blues prospects during prospect camp back in early July.
"The thing I noticed the most this year was the detail in some of our younger players," he said. "You don't always get to see that, especially with the kids coming out of junior. I was really impressed with players that came this year, especially the drafted players in this year's draft. Doug and the staff did an outstanding job in finding those players. I think moving forward here, whether it's two or three years down the road, it does take some of those kids a little bit longer to develop, but there's some real good players that are coming through this and (having) long tenures."
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