Thoughts after Day 1 of the Division I Group A in Bolzano

I am currently in Bolzano, Italy covering the World Championship Division I Group A for IIHF.com. Here are my thoughts on what took place on the first day of action. 

After seeing each team play once, I believe that Italy and Hungary will go up and Romania will go down. The other three will be somewhere in the middle but it’s tough to call what order they’ll finish at this point.

The big surprise of the first day was the first game, in which Korea defeated Slovenia 4-2. Slovenia played in the top flight last year, and while they lost all seven games, they were a veteran group that had played together for years and were not an easy opponent – four of their defeats were by one goal. Korea, on the other hand, last played in the top flight in 2018 thanks in large part to naturalized citizens who are no longer on the team. Since then, they haven’t seriously threatened to go back up.

Therefore, the Slovenes seemed like clear favourites and, indeed, early on they dominated. Captain Robert Sabolič opened the scoring a few minutes in and they went looking for more. Slowly but surely, though, the younger, faster Koreans turned the tide.

“We knew we had to skate,” emphasized Korean captain Sangwook Kim. “Maybe skate all night and make them a little bit tired, and generate chances from that.”

“That was like a cold shower,” Sabolič said after. “We didn’t underestimate them. We know they’re a good team; a fast team. We knew this could happen and it happened.”

It’s long been a concern that Slovenia’s core of players is aging with worries they don’t have enough young talent to replace them. With the retirement of a couple of their veteran players after last year’s World Championship, that concern is starting to play out. This year’s Slovenian team is younger, but not as young as Korea’s, or as fast.

On the topic of young, fast Asian teams, Japan was up next. I covered last year’s Division I Group B in Tallinn, where Japan won five straight games to earn the promotion. After the last game, I spoke at length with coach Perry Pearn, who told me that in Japan, “almost every player learns how to skate really well, so you start off most national teams with really good speed.”

Although they are the team that was promoted from Group B, I don’t think the Japanese are going back down and, despite losing 3-1 to Hungary, they didn’t look like a team that’s headed back down.

Back in February, the same two teams met in Budapest for Olympic Qualifying and Japan won 2-1. They could have (and maybe should have) won this game too. Japan outshot Hungary 31-19, but normally solid Japanese goalie Yuta Narisawa gave up a really weak one to make it 2-0 early in the third period, and the last goal was an empty-netter.

Interstingly, Pearn coached Japan up until February’s Olympic Qualifying but he’s now an assistant coach on the Italian team, while ex-NHLer Jarrod Skalde is now Japan’s bench boss.

The nightcap was the game the Bolzano fans were waiting for, Italy against Romania, although it held the least drama of the three with Italy winning comfortably 6-1.

The Romanians won Group B somewhat surprisingly in 2019 and have remained ever since. After a pair of pandemic-related cancellations, they finished last in the five-team Group A tournament in 2022 but no team was relegated so they could bring the group back to six teams in 2023. Last year, they managed a 3-2 win over Lithuania but lost the others. There doesn’t seem to be any low-hanging fruit for them to knock off this year.

After Monday's day off, all the team's are back in action Tuesday and Wednesday. Some of those matchups look pretty straightforward but the biggest wildcards for me are Korea and Japan. On Tuesday we'll see Korea vs Hungary and Japan vs Italy, and then the two Asian teams against each other on Wednesday. After that, we should know if either of them are serious contenders this year.