When are Team Canada announcing their squad? They aren't going to play NHL players mid-season are they?
I imagine it will be very late. For Worlds they can leave slots open and call people up mid-tournament, if/when their teams get knocked out of the NHL play-offs, although Canada tend not to do that now. Current thinking seems to be that a settled team will be more successful than one disrupted by the late arrival of ‘star players’.
If a team makes the NHL play-offs, you can
more or less rule those guys out of Worlds.