PLYMOUTH, Mich. -- This past week saw USA Hockey hold its evaluation camp for this winter's IIHF world junior championship, and three other nations -- Canada, Sweden and Finland -- also took part in a series of practices and games to gauge their top talent for inclusion on the rosters.
If you missed my flurry of social posts on the event, you're in luck: What follows is a rundown of the players who stood out the most to me through the practices, scrimmages and games.
You may notice that I didn't list Arizona's Dylan Strome or Toronto's Mitch Marner here; if you wanted the spectacular insight about how top-five picks from two drafts ago -- who have torn the OHL to shreds the past two seasons -- looked great against junior-level competition, then I do apologize. Instead, here are 14 players whose production demonstrated improvement since we last saw them in competition: