Ever since the NHL and NHLPA announced that the World Cup of Hockey would return in February 2028 with at least eight teams, there has been much speculation about where the games will take place and who will participate, including some wild suggestions.
Miroslav Šatan, former NHL right winger and current president of Hockey Slovakia, recently revealed on a podcast that the tournament will likely be played under one of two possible formats, as reported by Šport.sk.
“We’ll probably see a format of eight national teams, at least that’s what we’ve heard,” Šatan began. “There’s also another option, where six teams would be directly selected for the tournament and four teams in Europe would play some kind of qualification just before the World Cup – maybe a week or a few days before. And of those four teams, where we (Slovakia) would probably be, two would advance to the main tournament. We’ll see which model comes to pass.”
The qualification tournament being held immediately before the main tournament would be interesting. It would mean the main tournament’s schedule would be made and tickets would be sold before all the teams are known. It’s also hard to imagine the NHL pausing the regular season long enough for all of that to happen.
Šatan doesn’t speculate on whether or not the Russians will participate but, if they do, they would surely be among the six teams that go to the main tournament along with Canada, the USA, Sweden, Finland and Czechia. Slovakia would likely be in the next group of four along with Germany and Switzerland, with other possibilities being Denmark and Latvia.
“If the qualifying model is chosen, we will definitely be in the qualifying part,” said Šatan. “If it’s an eight-team system, I think there will be a point in the future, maybe in a year or two, when the NHL looks at the world rankings and also what happens in the Olympics.”
Predicting Slovakia's 2026 Olympic roster
By winning their group at the final round of qualifying this past weekend, the <a href="https://thehockeynews.com/international/latest-news/latvia-denmark-slovakia-and-maybe-france-qualify-for-2026-olympics">Slovaks have qualified for the men’s ice hockey tournament at the 2026 Winter Olympics</a> in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo.
Šatan, who played over 1000 NHL games for the Edmonton Oilers, Buffalo Sabres, New York Islanders, Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins and won four medals for Slovakia at the IIHF World Championship – including gold in 2002 – has also been involved in all three previous World Cups organized by the NHL.
He played for Slovakia in both the 1996 and 2004 and in 2016 was GM of Team Europe, which definitely won’t be returning.
“I think that, even with how well we played in 2016 – the European team was in the final – it wasn’t the final that they imagined, and so we probably won’t see that format again,” he smiled.