Who will win in Div I, group B World Hockey Championship?

[UtwigMU]

2004 IIHF World Championship Div I
Group B
Gdansk
POLAND
12.04. - 18.04.2004

Teams

Slovenia
Poland
Estonia
Italy
Romania
Korea

The winner of group A and group B will go in World Series (former A group) next year.

The WS will be in Czech republic from 24th April to 9th May. Regarding that, any of the following teams can win: Canada (last year's World Champion, Czech republic, Slovakia, Sweden, Russia.


WRT to I/B IMO it will either be either us or Poles, they have advantage since championship is taking place there. And it will be fun to see our team again winning games with 10 goals difference.

[UtwigMU]

So here are some results:

Romania - Estonia 3 - 6
Korea - Slovenia 2 - 10
Italy - Poland 4 - 0
Estonia - Korea 11 - 0
Slovenia - Italy 4 - 0
Poland - Romania 9 - 0

Looks like I division for us next year. I'd love to see our team play the Canadians.

If no surprise victory from lower three teams comes (last time our team played Estonia 3 years ago, it was 16-0), Poland has to beat us 4 - 0 on last game of tournament in order to win.

[UtwigMU]

In the other group UK tied 4 - 4 with Norway (the hosts), so they have a chance to go to A.

[KvHagedorn]

Heh.. I voted for Estonia just to yank your chain
looks like they actually did pretty well..

[UtwigMU]

This appears so only since our entire team got food poisoned just prior to championship.

That's why they only played 10 - 2 with Korea. They used to play 15-1 or 16 to 0 3 years ago with bottom teams from Div B.

We're No. 15 in World ranking - very good for 2M country with 4 covered skating rinks (used to be 3 untill recently), 4 team first league and 500 registered players.

[UtwigMU]

Slovenia Estonia 7 - 2

Division I, Gdansk: Super Slovenia promoted to Austria 2005

Slovenia is back in hockey’s world elite after a highly convincing 7-2-victory against Estonia. The expected “final” game against Poland on Sunday is of no consequence.

Link

It appears Belarus and Norway game will be decisive in the other group.

[Novdid]

You belong in the first group, your team is quite good.

[agallag]

Originally posted by UtwigMU
...very good for 2M country with 4 covered skating rinks (used to be 3 untill recently...

4 covered rinks in the whole country? We've got 6 covered rinks in the one complex that I play in, which is a purely recreational men's league. Go to http://www.icegardens.com/ and click on "Facility Info". Their winter leagues have almost 400 registered teams, with over 5000 players. Very few of those teams are in any way competitive, although we do have one of the Women's Pro league teams who are based there, and a couple of our olympic women are on that team.

And that's just one facility of several hundred in the Toronto area alone. There's probably thousands of rinks in the entire country.

So yeah, if you're producing internationally competitive hockey players with those limited resources, that's quite an accomplishment. You should be very proud of those boys!

[UtwigMU]

Yep, they are No. 15 in the World ATM, the highest they were was 13 2 years ago.

Here's the story: Hockey started in Slovenia pre WW2. Slovenia and Slovenians dominated all wintersports (alpine skiing, ski jump, ice hockey) in ex Yougoslavia. The Yougoslavian ice hockey league leaders were 2 Slovenian, 1 Croatian and 1 Serbian team (the former had lot's of players who transfered from Slovenia and Slovenian coaches).

1990-1991, Yougoslavia, Czech republic and Soviet Union fall appart. Slovenia, strong teams from ex Soviet union (Ukraine, Kazakstan, Belarus, baltic states), and Slovakia (among top 5) most of which play in A or World Series now, were dropped in C group, so C group was actually quite tough in early 90's, since only 1 or 2 teams went to B per season. It was quite funny, since you had some of World's best and worst teams playing.

So we made it to group B in second season. Group B was again hard, since not all good teams could go to higher league at 2 teams per season. I recall a last game between Slovenia and Ukraine, which wasn't deciding anything, where the penalty minutes per match World record for World championships was set.

Unlike for instance Italy, which has lot's of Italian Canadians playing we had only two guys from north America. A Canadian Slovenian Ed Kastelic and black goalkeeper from USA - Stanley Ottis Reddick, they both no longer play for national team.

After that Group A was enlarged to 16 teams and group B was renamed to division I and split and 1 groups of 8 teams. This was also done in order to keep more commercially interesting countries in higher divisions.

So two years ago our team made it in World Series and they won the relegation round and dropped out last year.

The problem with relegation round is again commercial interest:
One asian team has guaranteed place in A division and they play asian qualifications. The winner goes to World Series (A), the looser goes to Division I (B). Theese qualifications are played between Japan and South Korea, so if Japan beats inferiour Korean team, they have guaranteed spot.

So out of 4 teams that go in WC relegation round, Japan stays in league, even if they are last, which is usually the case. Only winning relegation round guarantees remaining in the league.

Last year USA* won relegation round with Belarus 2nd, Slovenia 3d and Japan last.

*(One problem is that more good NHL player have Canadian passport, World competitions are not popular in USA and WC comes at end of Stanley cup, so some of good US players can't play at championship. Although this also happens to other good teams, such as Sweden, Canada and Slovakia...

So if USA won't start taking things seriously, a bad day, a good opponent and they might fall in B group)

Next year the carte blanchee for Japan is no more, so relegations will be fair and also WC is in neighbouring Austria, so chances for remaining in league are good.


So, considering size of country and other things, we can really be proud of our hockey team. They are the highest ranking among our team-sport teams (handball doesn't count).