Good news for hockey lovers : World Cup of hockey is back. In the autumn of 2016 the tournament will be held in Montreal and Toronto. The latest World Cup was played was in 2004, and before that, 1996. It was formerly called Canada Cup.
Canadian dominance
Canada has won the cup five out of seven times. In 2004 they beat Finland in the final. For the other teams, playing in Canada is the hardest thing there is. Canada are extremely strong at home ice and have rigged everything from training times to dressing rooms to their advantage. They usually also have the benefit of the referees and get away with almost anything. The audience is merciless . Games are played on small rink with NHL dimensions . This means that Canada and the United States go in as favorites in the tournament, just like in the Olympics in Vancouver in 2010 where they met in the final and Sidney Crosby could score the game winning goal for Canada in overtime. We hope for a great tournament with lots of interesting matches!
Ice hockey World Championships 2015
Before the World Cup, a couple of World Championships are to be played. The 2015 championships are played in Czech Republic 1-17th of May. There are two groups of eight teams of which the first four will advance to the quarter finals. As usual, the tournament is hard to predict without knowing how many reinforcements from the National Hockey League each team receives. Russia is always strong thanks to their internal KHL. Sweden and Finland are traditionally strong teams at big ice hockey. Czeck Republic will have a sixth player on the ice in form of their home crowd. One can never rule out Canada while USA has been struggling to get a gold medal in the World Championships for a long time.
Group A:
Sweden
Canada
Czech Republic
Switzerland
Latvia
France
Germany
Austria
Group B:
Finland
Russia
United States
Slovakia
Norway
Belarus
Slovenia
Denmark
