Maple Leafs prospect Tyler Biggs was selected to Team USA's selection camp for the World Junior Hockey Championship. (ERNEST DOROSZUK/QMI Agency file photo)
TORONTO - Their paths to the U.S. preliminary roster for the 2013 world junior championship couldn’t have been more different.
Toronto Maple Leafs prospects Tyler Biggs, a winger with the Oshawa Generals, and Garret Sparks, a goaltender with the Guelph Storm, have turned their sights on Ufa, Russia, after they were among the 27 players on the roster revealed by USA Hockey on Tuesday morning.
Biggs, the 22nd pick overall by the Leafs in 2011, can be a bull-in-the-china-shop type of forward, one who figured he would be competing at the world juniors one day. Sparks, taken 190th by the Leafs in the same year, said he would have laughed a year ago had he been told he would be wearing his nation’s colours on such a stage.
“I just kind of felt I was a long shot at the beginning of the process,” Sparks said. “To be named to the team is quite an accomplishment for me, personally. It has been a combination of playing for a great team in Guelph, being surrounded by people who really support m
