This year Women's Worlds will be held in České Budějovice in Czechia. This city in South Bohemia is the home of the Budweiser Budvar Brewery – the original Budweiser beer the American concoction is named for. Budweis is the German name for the city, hence the beer name, and brewing dates back to the 13th century there. If you want to try it, you can buy the original Budweiser Budvar in Canada and the US as Czechvar.
Aside from beer, České Budějovice also has a hockey rink, so onto the games:
Format & Teams
The tournament has 10 teams, split into two groups. Each group plays a round-robin within their group and then all the teams in Group A and the top three teams in Group B advance to the quarterfinals in this configuration:
A1-B3, A2-B2, A3-B1, A4-A5
This structure usually means that the first-place team in Group B has a chance at advancing, but the other two teams are much less likely to win in the quarterfinals.
The winners of the quarterfinals are re-seeded to pit the best against the fourth and the second best against the third.
Unlike in the men's or WJC events, the two highest ranked losers of the quarterfinals play off, and the winner is ranked fifth. That fifth-place team joins the A Group next year.
The two lowest ranked teams from the round-robin are relegated to Division I Group A. Those teams are replaced next year by the top two teams in this year's tournament for that group, which also runs through mid-April.
Note that there should be a top-level tournament next year. The IIHF now runs a Women's Worlds in August during Olympic years, but no host has been announced yet.
Group A
- Canada
- Czechia
- Finland
- Switzerland
- USA
Group B
- Germany
- Hungary
- Japan
- Norway
- Sweden
Team Canada features several of the Toronto Sceptres, starting with coach Troy Ryan. Kristen Campbell, Renata Fast, Emma Maltais, Natalie Spooner, Blayre Turnbull and Daryl Watts are all members of the team.
Hockey Canada named Hannah Miller to the team, which makes sense as she's having her second very good PWHL season, but she played for China too recently according to the IIHF and is not eligible. Hockey Canada added the Sceptres' Julia Gosling to replace her.
Team USA drew from the Sceptres as well with Savannah Harmon, Jesse Compher and Hayley Scamurra all named to the team.
Other Sceptres players named to teams are:
Noemi Neubauerová for the host Czechia team, Laura Kluge for Germany and Anna Kjellbin for Sweden.
Schedule
All team Canada round-robin games are on at 1 pm Toronto time, some other games are earlier in the morning.
TSN is the broadcaster in Canada, and they cover all games, with the occasional exception of the placement game.
This post lists the US broadcasters, but note that in the round-robin, only the Team USA games are shown:
Full schedule and results:
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