What to expect from the Ice Hockey World Championships 2021
15 May 2021 | Fredrik Pålsson
Men’s ice hockey World Championships 2021 are only few weeks away so we at Eurohockey.com dived into it and explored what to expect from the tournament.
Tournament will be played in Latvia, Riga
between 21th of May and 6th of june. Main venue will be the wonderful Arena
Riga and second venue Olympic Sports Center which is currently going through construction process to offer the best possible experience for the
players and fans.
There will be in total 16 teams taking part in
the tournament and the biggest favorites are not so surprisingly big ice hockey
countries Russia and Canada. But this year preparations have been totally
different because of the covid pandemic, which can make a big difference when
the puck is being dropped.
IIHF World Championships 2021
predictions:
There are many question marks coming to the
tournament. How has each team been able to practise together? How early will
they know their available squad? How will they perform in a more restricted
environment? All these things will have an effect on the relative strength of
the teams. Some teams can handle it better than the others and it can lead to
bigger surprises than you normally see in IIHF World Championships.
Some countries might also lack many of their
key players because of Covid related restrictions or just because players might
be less willing to take the risk and travel to foreign countries or continents.
This might cause the biggest favorites to show up with a little bit weaker
teams this year which could benefit the smaller countries.
There are rumours that for example Russian
national team will be facing many refusals among their key players. This might
be the case with any other country as well, so it will be interesting to see
what happens.
In our opinion this is only a good thing. You
don’t want to see matches going 8-2 between the favorite and the challenger. It
makes the whole tournament more exciting when smaller countries are able to put
pressure and challenge bigger ice hockey countries. This can happen in the 2021
World Championships.
Finns are known to be passionate when it comes
to IIHF World Championships and every year the event is one of the most
followed sporting events of the year. You can follow and enjoy ice hockey and
all other sports and casino from Finnish local outlet Bonuskoodit.com.
Ice Hockey World Championships
2021 matches
Tournament starts 21st of may with a group
stage. 16 teams are divided into two groups and during the group stage each
country will face all teams in their group once. 4 out of 8 teams in each group
will then advance to playoffs, where teams will play best of one match -series
until there are two teams left. Those two countries will face each other in the
Ice Hockey World Championships final on 6th of june.
Here are the countries taking part to the
tournament:
Group A
Russia
Sweden
Czech Republic
Switzerland
Slovakia
Denmark
Belarus
Great Britain
Group B
Canada
Finland
United States
Germany
Latvia
Norway
Italy
Kazakhstan