Brampton 2023: How to watch the IIHF Women’s World Championships

The IIHF Women's World Championships begin on Wednesday in Brampton, Ontario. Ten teams, what appears to be one sheet of ice (which is not how a ten-team IIHF tournament is supposed to work), and one trophy up for grabs.

Most days of the round-robin there are three games per day, so perhaps you won't be able to watch all of them shot by shot,  but with so many people working from home these days, surely the best background noise is hockey noise.

How to Watch
Dates: April 5 - 16
Broadcast: TSN (1-5), RDS, NHLN
Streaming: TSN.ca, RDS Direct

One upside to having all games in the same rink is that there are no games that overlap each other. In what I think is a first, in English Canada only one game in the entire tournament will not be broadcast on TV, and that game will be available on TSN.ca. TSN will also be doing a half-hour pre-game show for all Team Canada games. If you want to check out the broadcast team and all the social media coverage, you can find that here.

RDS will carry Team Canada games plus the quarter-final with Team USA, the semi-finals and the medal games. The NHL Network is only carrying Team USA games, plus the semi-finals and medal games.

For those of you who just want to watch the "big" games, here are the schedule highlights:

USA vs Canada: Monday, April 10 7:00 pm EDT
QF 2 feat USA: Thursday, April 13 1:30 pm EDT
QF 3 feat Canada: Thursday, April 13 5:00 pm EDT
SF 1: Saturday, April 15 12:00 pm EDT
SF 2 feat Canada if they qualify: Saturday, April 15 4:00 pm EDT
Bronze medal game: Sunday, April 16 3:00 pm EDT
Gold medal game: Sunday April 16 3:00 pm EDT

Full schedule

Tournament Format

The women’s tournament is divided into two groups of five teams, Group A and Group B.

Group A consists of the teams that finished in the top 5 at the 2022 World Championships (Canada, USA, Czechia, Switzerland and Japan). Group B includes the teams that finished 6 through 9 (Finland, Sweden, Germany, and Hungary) as well as the winner of the 2022 Division IA World Championships (France).

Each group will play a round robin tournament. A regulation win is three points, an overtime or shootout win is two points and an overtime or shootout loss is one point.

All five teams in Group A and the top three teams in Group B will play in the quarter-finals. The quarter-finals will be played between A1-B3, A2-B2, A3-B1, A4-A5.

The quarter-final winners will move on to the semi-finals, where the highest-placed winner will play the lowest-placed winner and the other two semi-finalists will play each other.

The winners of the semi-final games will play each other for Gold, and the losers of the semi-final games will play each other for Bronze.

The quarter-final losers will play placement games in a knockout format. The winner of the 5th-place game will earn a Group A seeding for next year. The remaining teams (7th to 10th) will be ranked according to 1. the tiered group they played in (A/B), 2. their position within the group, 3. their preliminary-round record (1. points, 2. goal difference, 3. goals scored). NB: I copied the preceding paragraph directly from the tournament website here. I have printed a PDF in case of any communication difficulties as happened at last year's Worlds.

Overtime

Overtime in the round robin will be five minutes of sudden-death 3 on 3, followed by a shoot-out

Overtime for most playoff games will be 10 minutes of sudden-death 3 on 3, followed by a shoot-out.

Overtime the Gold medal game will be 20 minute periods of 3 on 3 until someone scores.

Shootouts are minimum five shooters per team, which is IIHF standard. After five, shooters can repeat, but any player who was in the penalty box at the end of overtime cannot participate in the shootout. Goalies can also be changed between shots.