With the end of the 2024 World Championship comes the latest IIHF Men’s World Rankings and the preliminary groups for the 2025 Worlds, which will be co-hosted by Stockholm, Sweden and Herning, Denmark.
The preliminary group allocations are based on the World Rankings, following the “serpentine” system. However, exceptions are often made to maximize revenue for organizers and certainly will be this time, as co-hosts Sweden and Denmark will not be assigned to the same group. Therefore, according to multiple sources, these will probably be the groups:
Stockholm Group: 1. Canada, 3. Finland, 7. Sweden, 9. Slovakia, 10. Latvia, 13. Austria, 14. France, 15. Slovenia.
Herning Group: 4. Czechia, 6. United States, 8. Germany, 11. Denmark, 12. Norway, 15. Kazakhstan, 18. Hungary.
In this instance, sixth-ranked USA has been swapped with seventh-ranked Sweden. The other option would be to swap 10th-ranked Latvia with 11th-ranked Denmark. The latter option might be attractive if organizers would prefer to have Finland – with its large contingent of travelling fans – in nearby Stockholm. However, such preferences can’t always be accommodated.
Notable in these group lists are the absence of the teams ranked second and 16th – Russia and Belarus – which have been suspended indefinitely by the IIHF. The pair have now missed the last three World Championships and have therefore been assigned the same ranking points as the third and 14th-ranked teams – their respective places in the rankings at the time they were banned. This had the interesting effect of having each team moving up one place this year (Russia from third to second; Belarus from 17th to 16th) without actually playing.
Next year’s groups are also missing the team ranked 17th – Great Britain – which was relegated this year along with Poland (21st) . Hungary and Slovenia were promoted after finishing first and second at this year’s Division I Group A tournament in Bolzano, Italy.