Zach Werenski said he was having the best time of his life at the World Junior Championships in Helsinki, Finland. After all, the junior defenseman was the United States’ captain.
Life was good for Werenski, free of distractions, and he wouldn’t have preferred to be in any other situation. Werenski tallied two goals and seven assists — the highest point total of a defenseman in the tournament — en route to being named the tournament’s best defenseman.
However, on New Year’s Day, a Columbus Dispatch article irked Werenski. The report said Werenski, the eighth pick in the 2015 NHL Draft, was “unhappy in college and thinking of turning pro.”
That report is completely false, and Werenski called it a “terrible rumor.”
“It’s not something you want to see while scrolling through Twitter,” Werenski said. “But that’s why it’s a rumor and you push it off.
“I was kind of like, ‘What is this?’ when I read it and put it behind me. At that point, I stopped looking at Twitter the rest of the tournament.”
Werenski, who has five goals and eight assists this season, said he does not even know what he’s planning to do at the end of the season.
“I haven’t even thought about what I’m going to do at the end of this year,” Werenski said. “I want to win at Michigan. That’s my goal, and I came back to win a national championship, and I think we have the team to do that.”
A rumor like this could have boded poorly for Werenski, as it never looks good when a player wants to abandon his teammates. To solve that problem, he immediately sent a text in the team’s group chat.
“He put in our group chat that he is coming back happy as ever and we had no doubts about it,” said junior forward JT Compher.
Thus, all rumors about Werenski bolting Michigan should be put to rest. You heard it from him.