I didn't want to step into the debate here but when I see the rosters for the IIHF Worlds forming, it comes to mi mind that this tournament is, in a way, saying more about the actual state of hockey in individual countries than a best-on-best tournament. I mean, IIHF Worlds is a lot about the depth of a broader selection of players. If a nation has a very limited number of high quality players, they can still form a decent 25 man roster. But it is much more difficult to form a decent roster when several of the players are missing. In this sense, IIHF Worlds in basically about how deep you can dig in the selection of players without losing that much in terms of quality.
And here we see that the condition of hockey in Czechia is still very bad, although there are some good prospects for the near future. The team will probably miss 5 top players (Pastrňák, Zacha, Nečas, Hertl, Hronek), or 6, if we count long-term injured Filip Chytil. And it already deteriorates the quality of the team by tones, at least on paper. If Sweden is missing, lets say, 15, even 20 of their top players, they still have a considerably higher quality (on paper) than the Czechs without 6 players. Never talking about Canada and the US, but they are a bit different cases, no European nation can compare with them in terms of depth.
This is a very unpleasant situation for the Czech hockey. Paradoxically, we may have better chances at the 2026 Olympics than at the IIHF Worlds this year. Because there is a smaller difference between the top 25 Czech roster and, say, top 25 Swedish roster than between the top 60 Czech long list and top 60 Swedish long list. Just like the difference between the top 25 Czech roster and top 25 Latvian rosters is smaller than between the Czech and Latvian long lists.
We can but hope for the successful development of our future prospects. Of course I am not saying this tournament is going to be a disaster. Even a not-so-stacked team can have a great tournament. These short events are much different from a league season. But on paper it definitely doesn't look very optimistic.