Three players who have committed to the Gophers are on the under-18 U.S. Select team that will compete in the Ivan Hlinka Memorial hockey tournament from Aug. 11-15 in Piestany, Slovakia.

The three are defenseman Ben Marshall (Grant, Minn.) of Mahtomedi High School, and forwards Nick Bjugstad (Coon Rapids) of Blaine HS and Christian Isackson (West St. Paul) of St. Thomas Academy.

All three of them played on the U.S. team in the Five Nations Tournament a year ago.

They are joined on the U18 team this year by two other Minnesotans, goalie Zane Gothbery of Thief River Falls and forward Kyle Rau of Eden Prairie. Kyle is the younger brother of Chad Rau, a college star at Colorado College who was a senior there last season.

The players for this U.S. team were picked from the recent under-17 development camp.

St. Cloud State assistant coach Erik Rud will coach the team in the Hlinka Memorial. Other teams in the tournament are Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden and Switzerland.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 11:43 pm and is filed under Gophers men's hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.