TORONTO -- The buzz surrounding Team North America continues.
The concept of having a roster of talented players 23-and-under has even caught the attention of the veteran players in the best-on-best tournament. Talking with a few of the highest-profile players in the world, including Sidney Crosby, Steven Stamkos and Patrice Bergeron, all wish they had the opportunity to play for a similar-style team when they broke into the NHL as teenagers and early 20-somethings.
"Oh, that would have been amazing," said Bergeron. "It would have been such a great experience and I would have soaked everything in. It's just a great opportunity for them to be there and obviously play against the best players, and they're part of that, so it means they're amazing players themselves. We're seeing something special."
Stamkos, 26, has already played eight seasons in the NHL for the Tampa Bay Lightning. He said the concept of having the best players of a generation on one roster is intriguing and wishes there had been something like that for him to be part of earlier in his career.
"That would've been pretty cool," Stamkos said. "You look at the skill set that's on that team, and even the last couple of years the talent in this league has grown so much that makes that team possible. Four, five, six, seven or eight years ago, I don't know if you even have enough guys that age, just the way the NHL was with a very limited number of younger guys that were playing in the league. With the talent that's come up in the last five years, it allowed them to put that team together, and not just put it together, but be competitive as we've seen in the pretournament games. It's definitely an intriguing storyline.
"Everyone's talking about the North American team and the speed and the skill that they bring. It's an intriguing storyline that's crept into this tournament, with no one really knowing what to expect from them. They're not in our group, so we won't see them until the semifinals hopefully, but that's the team that has caught the pretournament by storm. It should be interesting to see how this whole tournament plays out."
The landscape has changed drastically since Bergeron, 31, made his rookie debut as an 18-year-old. His rookie season with the Boston Bruins was 2003-04.
"It's funny, I looked at the age [difference] of every guy in the lineup for the Bruins, and a lot of guys were over 30 back then -- a lot of guys," he said. "It's pretty rare now, so it's changed a lot. I don't think we would have had too many [23-and-under] players."
There were only eight 18-year-olds in the NHL that season: Dan Fritsche, Brent Burns, Nathan Horton, Bergeron, Milan Michalek, Dustin Brown, Eric Staal and Marc-Andre Fleury.
Compared to the other seven teams in the World Cup, Crosby, 29, doesn't know what to expect from Team North America.
"The under-23 team is the one that everyone's been talking about, and it's a different dynamic there," Crosby said. "I've rarely seen a team like that before. I would say their team [is most interesting], just because of the unknown, as far as not seeing an under-23 team in a competition before, and you look at their games early on and it's exactly what everyone expected. They're fast. They're confident. That whole dynamic is the one I'm most interested in."
Crosby admitted that he can't imagine being an 18-year-old and playing in the World Cup of Hockey without playing in an NHL game.
"I look at Auston Matthews, and he hasn't played a game in the NHL yet and he's stepping into the World Cup. The fact that he played [in the Swiss] pro league last year I'm sure helps a little bit, but that's a big jump, and those guys look pretty comfortable for being [young] and jumping into this," Crosby said. "I haven't really thought about it a whole lot, but I can't imagine making that step. Once you're in it, they have a great ability to adapt, and that's gotten them to this point so early. That's their biggest strength and they're showing that right now."