Canadian juniors make first cuts

The Canadian junior team's first round of cuts yielded at least one big surprise.

On Saturday morning, national junior head coach Marc Habschied released goaltender Cam Ward, defencemen Aaron Johnson and Doug Lynch and forwards Corey Locke, Jonathan Ferland and Nathan Horton to trim his roster to 29 players.

Perhaps the biggest surprise out of the bunch was Locke, who scored one goal and added an assist in an intrasquad game the night before.

"I thought I played really well," said Locke, who plays for the Ottawa 67's and leads the Ontario Hockey League in scoring with 73 points in 29 games. "I don't think I could have played much better. They saw what Corey Locke could offer and if they didn't like it, they didn't like it."

"I'd never been to a selection camp or a summer camp or anything. I've learned a lot and I'm going to take everything I've learned back to Ottawa."

Ward, who plays for the Red Deer Rebels of the Western Hockey League, admitted he didn't have a strong camp.

"I felt through the week I wasn't up to par," he said. "When you have three goaltenders like we have out there, competing against them you have to be as sharp as you can be.

"Unfortunately it wasn't my week for that. I was a very average goaltender."

Horton was a late addition to the selection camp roster and was considered a long shot to make the team.

At 17, he was just considered too young and inexperienced to compete at the high-profile, highly-skilled tournament.

While Horton will have another chance to play for the Canadian junior team, it was Lynch, Ferland and Johnson's last opportunity to play in the tournament.

"Obviously I didn't play well enough at the point to stay around awhile longer," said Lynch. "It's kind of hard to know what they want and expect. It's too bad, but that's reality and I'm going to move on."