Following their successful showings at the World Junior Summer Showcase, a pair of Sabres 2024 draft picks, Minnesota natives Adam Kleber and Brodie Ziemer, emerged as featured players and appear to have an inside track to representing the United States later this winter at 2025 IIHF World Junior Championship in Ottawa, Ontario.
Lauded as a leader on virtually every scouting report, Ziemer truly is a player that leads by example and it showed in his four Showcase appearances, where he worked to score three goals and iced the victory over Canada with the shootout winner.
Ziemer began the first split squad game centering the fourth line for USA Blue, but he quickly climbed the ladder as the week progressed, working his way to top-six right-wing slot with premium linemates. He skated with Oliver Moore (CHI) and Max Plante (DET) in his second game, and was moved up to the top unit with Cole Eiserman (NYI) and 2025 draft stud James Hagens for USA’s tilt with Finland. Ziemer capped the week by skating on the second line with Plante and Chris Pelosi (BOS) in the 5-4 shootout win over Canada.
There is not a ton of flash in Ziemer’s game, but his engine is always running. He’s really good using his body to win small-area battles. He’s tough in the trenches and he can be an agent of chaos at the net front.
The 6-foot-5 Kleber regularly stood out due his sheer size and his sure-handedness when handling the puck. He plays a simple two-way game, but his hallmark is his sharp defensive ability marked by excellent mobility and smarts when angling off the rush. He was a top-four fixture in split-squad games at the WJSS, often times taking the ice with highly mobile partners Paul Fischer (STL), Cole Hutson (WSH), and Zeev Buium (MIN).
If his WJSS usage is any indication, he should force his way into that 5-6 area of the blueline corps pending a solid start to his collegiate season with Minnesota-Duluth.
Kleber logged one assist through his first three games, and made a mark by aggressively protecting his goaltender late in USA loss 5-3 loss to Finland.
Boston University sophomore defenseman Gavin McCarthy also participated at the WJSS, but the path to a roster spot on the back end does not appear as clear as Kleber’s is at the moment. Team USA would certainly appreciate his physicality and overall defensive awareness, but there is a lot of competition for the role he’d likely serve. As it presently stands, he’s likely on the fringe for the seventh defensive spot.
Konsta Helenius (Finland), Anton Wahlberg (Sweden), Scott Ratzlaff (Canada), and Norwin Panocha (Germany) all skated at the 2023 WJC and remain eligible to return for the 2024 tournament.
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