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Ice Hockey World Championship

The Ice Hockey World Cup is a championship in ice hockey organized by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) each spring. Here you can read all about the Ice Hockey World Cup. We give you game schedules, betting tips and and which channels and sites are streaming.

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The tournament is played annually and is probably the clearest sign of spring of the year. The ice hockey World Cup was originally played in January – February, but is now usually played in April – May.

Betting on Ice Hockey World Championship

The seedings in the preliminary round of Ice Hockey World Championship are based on the IIHF World Ranking from previous year. There are 16 teams seeded into two groups. To be honest, there are not 16 good Ice Hockey nations in the world at the moment. This means that 5-6 teams don’t have any fair chances of winning.

The upside to this is that it can be really exciting to bet on Ice Hockey World Championship. In a match, like the one between Great Britain and Canada, GB is the obvious underdog. However we have seen underdogs being underestimated before and it will happen again. Anyhow we recommend betting with handicap bet in matches like this. It gives GB the upper hand within the bet and you will get a higher odds for Canada.

Sixteen teams are fighting for the world title in men’s ice hockey

The tournament has sixteen participating nations and is divided into two groups with 8 teams in each group. The most successful nations of all time are:

  1. Russia / Soviet Union (27 gold)
  2. Canada (26 gold)
  3. Czech Republic / Czechoslovakia (12 gold)
  4. Sweden (11 gold)
  5. Finland (4 gold)
  6. USA (2 gold)

History of IIHF World Championship

The men’s ice hockey World Cup was played for the first time in 1920. Between the years 1924–1968, the Olympics and the World Cup were played together, but from 1972 onwards they are played as separate tournaments. Due to World War II, no ice hockey World Cup 1940-1946 was played.

Women’s Ice Hockey World Cup

Since 1990, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IHHF) has also been organizing the Women’s Ice Hockey World Cup. The championship is usually held in April every year.

In this tournament, Canada and the USA have been dominant and won 10 and 9 gold respectively.