The St. Louis Blues won't be playing hockey deep into May, but four of their players will. The team announced on Thursday that four players would be representing their countries at the 2025 IIHF World Championships.
Blues captain Brayden Schenn and goaltender Jordan Binnington will be joining a Canadian team that is already pretty stacked. Along with those two Canadians, forwards Alexandre Texier (France) and Dalibor Dvosrky (Slovakia) will be donning international sweaters as well.
Schenn is a Team Canada veteran at this point. He played for Canada at the IIHF World Junior Championships as a highly-touted prospect at the U17, U18, and U20 (twice) level. At the men's level, Schenn played at Worlds in 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2018.
This will be Binnington's second time playing for Team Canada this calendar year after leading his team to the 4 Nations Face-Off championship in February. He went 3-1-0 with a .907 save percentage and 2.37 goals-against average while starting all four games for Canada. Binnington also played at the World Junior Championship in 2013 and at last year's World Championship.
Texier is one of just a handful of Frenchmen who have played in the NHL. In fact, with 90 points (40 goals, 50 assists) in 232 games, he already ranks fourth all-time among his fellow countrymen behind Antoine Roussel, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, and Sebastien Bordeleau. Given that, it's no surprise that he's been a huge part of his country's national team at every single level.
This will also be the second time representing his country this year for Dalibor Dvorsky. The 19-year-old forward racked up nine points (five goals, four assists) in five games while captaining Slovakia at the World Juniors in January. He has also played for his country at every level and was among the AHL's rookie leaders with 45 points (21 goals, 24 assists) this season. He didn't record a point in his two NHL games.
This year's IIHF World Championship is scheduled from today -- Friday, May 9 -- through May 25 in Stockholm, Sweden and Herning, Denmark.