2018 World Junior Hockey Championship: Team Belarus preview & roster

As the World Juniors approach, EOTP will be profiling every team in the tournament.

Belarus is making a dramatic return to the Men’s Under-20 World Ice Hockey Championship after winning the Division IA title last year.

The country’s roster currently holds five players who play in the CHL and one player who plays in the MHL: Russia’s junior league. Most of the players play in domestic leagues within Belarus. They do not have an Andrej Meszaros, Andrei, or Sergei Kostitsyn, so if they do win a game this year, it will not be on the back of one player.

Team Belarus final roster

#Player PositionLeagueCurrent team (NHL)
20Andrei GrischenkoGBelarusTeam Belarus U20
1Dmitri RodikGBelarusTeam Belarus U20
25Nikita TolopiloGBelarus2Team Belarus U18
18Dmitri BurovtsevDBelarusTeam Belarus U20
5Dmitri DeryabinDBelarusTeam Belarus U20
22Vladislav GabrusDBelarusTeam Belarus U20
3Andrei GostevDBelarusTeam Belarus U20
6Vladislav MartynyukDMHLKRS Junior
4Vladislav SokolovskiDBelarusDinamo-Molodechno
8Vladislav YeryomenkoDWHLCalgary Hitmen
26Nazar AnisimovFBelarusTeam Belarus U20
13Arseni AstashevichFBelarusTeam Belarus U20
7Viktor BovbelFBelarusTeam Belarus U20
19Ivan DrozdovFBelarusYunost Minsk
32Dmitri GrinkevichFBelarusTeam Belarus U20
30Ilya LitvinovFBelarusYunost Minsk
11Alexander LukashevichFBelarusTeam Belarus U20
12Igor MartynovFWHLVictoria Royals
21Vladislav MikhalchukFWHLPrince George Cougars
14Sergei PischukFBelarusTeam Belarus U20
10Vladislav RyadchenkoFBelarusTeam Belarus U20
17Yegor SharangovichFKHLDinamo Minsk
24Maxim SushkoFOHLOwen Sound Attack (PHI)

Weaknesses

Belarus will always be at a disadvantage in major tournaments. They only have 3,567 junior players to choose from and 41 rinks, 38 indoors, for those players to practise. The disadvantage means that Belarus is not coming into the tournament looking to win it all, but simply to not finish last and have to go back to the Division IA level.

Belarus is going to be in tough in Group B with Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic. Their best chance for a win might be against the Czechs, whose program has struggled the past few years. Switzerland can also run hot and cold at this tournament.

Strengths

For Belarus to win any games, however, they will need strong goaltending. This might come from the youngest of their three goalies, 17-year-old Nikita Tolopilo.

He is a 6’6” giant and has the best in-season stats of their three options, albeit in a lower-level league. Tolopilo is Belarus’ only player from a U-18 team, as the nation has elected to use a group of players that have played together in the past and are all 18 or 19 years old. This is a smart move for a team that wants to stay in the top division and lacks a star player.

X-Factor

The fact that the Belarussians have several members who’ve been playing together on the same team and will simply be adding a few decently talented players bodes well for them in the long run. It shows a commitment to building a program from the ground up, and may give them the leg up on their opponents in the first few games of the tournament.

Belarus has been a part of the IIHF since 1992 when the Soviet Union fell. That is not a long time to build up a program when the first few years are about finding national stability. The fact that they are a respectable hockey nation is impressive unto itself.

Belarus is not coming into this tournament looking to walk away with a medal. They will simply be trying to hang around. If they achieve this then they will have accomplished something that they have never done before.

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