How to make the IIHF World Championships more competitive?

[AdamoR61]

This year’s IIHF WC has consisted of many blowouts that make some games unwatchable. No one is trying to see the likes of Canada, USA and Sweden destroy the likes of Italy, Great Britain, France and Austria by 6+ goals. Its just not fun. With one day left to go in the round robin, there have been 10 games where the winner had won by at least 6 goals, 5 of these being Italy losing. How could the IIHF eliminate this?

The obvious answer is to get rid of these bad teams. Currently, there are 16 teams in the tournament and for it to be even, lets get it down to 10. Remove, Italy, France, Great Britain, Austria, Norway and Denmark as they are the worst in the tournament and have been on the receiving end of some severe blowouts over the years.

Now that we have 10 teams, how does round robin work? Well, simply split the teams up into 2 groups similar to now.

Group A: Finland, USA, Canada, Germany, Slovakia
Group B: Russia, Czech Republic, Sweden, Switzerland, Latvia

Each team would play against each team in their group just once. The point system would work similar to it is in the NHL.

Regulation/Overtime Win = 2 points
Regulation Loss = 0 points
Overtime/Shootout Loss= 1 point

The top 4 in each group would advance while the last place finishes of both groups would battle it out to avoid relegation (loser gets relegated).

Quarter Final:
1A vs 4B
2A vs 3B
3A vs 2B
4A vs 1B

From there, each matchup is going to be played out like the knock stage in the UEFA Champions League (soccer/football). The teams play a back-to-back, in which the team with the most goals over two games advances. If it is tied after game 2 in aggregate, the teams will play continuous 5 minute 4on4 period until a team scores. This overtime rule is to get rid of the shootout because in my opinion it doesn’t make sense for a knockout stage game to be decided in a shootout.

This format would also happen in the semi-finals.

Once the finals come, only one game will be played with the same overtime rules.

Do you agree with this? How else could IIHF WC be made more competitive? Leave your opinion below!

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[ijuka]

Unfortunately, in hockey if you're the better team, you really are the better team and blow outs are a real possibility. This is quite apparent in comparison to football(soccer) for example, where even with significant differences in possession and skill, it's quite possible for the worse team to hang in there or even compete for upset victories. As such, it's tough to fix because the problem stems from the nature of the game itself.

 

[Jakk123]

I don't have any problems with the current format. This year is kind of an exception, Italy and GB are weaker than usual bottom teams (with all due respect). Austria and France have also been very underwhelming, to the point they actually got relegated. I don't think there's any need to overreact.

 

[Nexon]

I don't have any problems with the current format. This year is kind of an exception, Italy and GB are weaker than usual bottom teams (with all due respect). Austria and France have also been very underwhelming, to the point they actually got relegated. I don't think there's any need to overreact.

Exactly, if you want hockey to spread more around the globe you need more teams to compete at elite level, if we reduce it to 10, where shall Slovenia and Hungary etc. take motivation when they would have no chance to promote themselves?

 

[Urbanskog]

What an absurd idea. How are the lesser teams ever going to get competitive if they are never given the chance to compete against the best teams?

 

[AdamoR61]

Exactly, if you want hockey to spread more around the globe you need more teams to compete at elite level, if we reduce it to 10, where shall Slovenia and Hungary etc. take motivation when they would have no chance to promote themselves?

They could still get promoted, I didn't remove that aspect. There is still an opportunity to get promoted.

 

[AdamoR61]

What an absurd idea. How are the lesser teams ever going to get competitive if they are never given the chance to compete against the best teams?

What competition is there when Sweden plays against Italy?

 

[AdamoR61]

Unfortunately, in hockey if you're the better team, you really are the better team and blow outs are a real possibility. This is quite apparent in comparison to football(soccer) for example, where even with significant differences in possession and skill, it's quite possible for the worse team to hang in there or even compete for upset victories. As such, it's tough to fix because the problem stems from the nature of the game itself.

We are never going to be able to fix this problem but if team Canada were to play against team Italy 10 times, the Canadians would win 10/10 however in soccer if a team like France were to play against the United States, I bet France only wins 7-8 of those 10 games. There is just no point in having these bad teams in there as good as their stories are. Just today, GB went nuts over not getting relegated.

 

[unknownbrother]

We are never going to be able to fix this problem but if team Canada were to play against team Italy 10 times, the Canadians would win 10/10 however in soccer if a team like France were to play against the United States, I bet France only wins 7-8 of those 10 games. There is just no point in having these bad teams in there as good as their stories are. Just today, GB went nuts over not getting relegated.

We were supposed to just survive last year in 1A and won the gold. Half our roster was playing Estonia and the Netherlands in 1B two years ago. This is a massive moment for British hockey. More kids are gonna look at this team and want to play hockey. We already had the first 100% British trained player, Liam Kirk, drafted to the NHL last year.

And I reckon France would beat USA 10/10 in football.

 

[Faterson]

If there were only 10 teams, no need to split into groups. Just a round-robin of all 10 teams, and cancel the play-offs.

But I'm OK with how it is today, and with the current 3-point system. (It's the NHL's point system with some games worth 2 points, others 3 points, that is absurd.)

 

[Sens Vader]

I love watching Canada destroy teams

 

[ForumNamePending]

A couple of things...

1) The "smaller" nations being this awful is something that has only popped recently, so cutting the field by close to 40% might be a tad reactionary. Of the teams you are singling out all you have to do is go back to last year and you'll see that Denmark beat Finland and entered their last prelim round game with a chance of make the QFs. If you go back two years you'll see that France beat Finland & Switzerland, and played competitive games against Canada and the Czech Rep. The same year Norway took both Finland and the Czech Rep to overtime. France ended up missing out on the QFs by a single point, and as far as I can tell Norway entered their last prelim round game with a chance to advance to the QFs.

2) There is definitely a recent trend with the bottom end teams being less competitive and getting blown out more often, and I think the IIHF should be concerned about it, but reducing the field to 10 teams only masks the root of the problem, it doesn't address it.

 

[Chainshot]

We were supposed to just survive last year in 1A and won the gold. Half our roster was playing Estonia and the Netherlands in 1B two years ago. This is a massive moment for British hockey. More kids are gonna look at this team and want to play hockey. We already had the first 100% British trained player, Liam Kirk, drafted to the NHL last year.

And I reckon France would beat USA 10/10 in football.

This is the best thing about this tournament - that a wave of kids are going to want to play the sport we love which is going to cause it to grow regionally. The more players playing, the better it is for the game.

 

[JackSlater]

To make it more competitive you cut teams. I'd prefer to see 12 total teams, but eve goigg down to 8 would make it far more competitive. More competitive isn't always a good thing though.

 

[JETZZZ]

Here are some terrible ideas:

They could do what the NHL does in the playoffs and make the refs tilt the game as much as they can to keep things close. If Canada starts to pull away from Italy in a game, the refs can start making a ton of calls on Canada, while ignoring everything Italy does, no matter how obvious. Its harder to pad a lead when your team is constantly killing penalties.

Or they could start combining lower ranked nations into a few better teams like Team Europe at the last World Cup. Perhaps putting random age restrictions only on the top 6 teams will help too. Canada can only send players under 25, USA can only send players 0ver 25. Russia has to send players between 23 ad 33, and Sweden has to send their junior team.

Or they could ban NHLers from competing, like at the last Olympics. Honestly, the NHL would probably prefer not to have their players risking injuries at the World Championships. If things are still lopsided, move on to removing KHL players next.

 

[Faterson]

Here are some terrible ideas

Indeed... I thought the thread's purpose was to make the tourney better than it is, not worse.

I can live with the blowouts as they are now. So what. It's much better than the awful previous format with lots of 4-team groups, then lots of other 3-team groups in the second stage, and so on.. That was confusing like hell. The format is pretty clean now.

 

[Outofbodyinhungary]

Hockey is arguably the most top heavy international sport in the world. The best 5 can blow out teams that are lower than the top 10 pretty regularly. This will never change, let the blowouts happen who cares.

 

[Jablkon]

What an absurd idea. How are the lesser teams ever going to get competitive if they are never given the chance to compete against the best teams?

Imo, they have more than enough chances. D1A has only 8 teams and two got promoted while top division has 16. Italy is synonymum of WHC tanking every year

 

[Phil McKraken]

Mikael Renberg made a good point during a Swedish broadcast. Playing in the highest division and getting blown out half the time doesn't necessarily benefit you, look at teams like Norway and France who've been here for a long time without improving at all. If anything they've gotten worse.

Make advancement to the highest division harder. Lower the amount of teams and then have a best of 3 between the bottom first division team and the top second division team, to filter out teams that aren't good enough.

 

[slovakiasnextone]

Mikael Renberg made a good point during a Swedish broadcast. Playing in the highest division and getting blown out half the time doesn't necessarily benefit you, look at teams like Norway and France who've been here for a long time without improving at all. If anything they've gotten worse.

Make advancement to the highest division harder. Lower the amount of teams and then have a best of 3 between the bottom first division team and the top second division team, to filter out teams that aren't good enough.

That is just one aspect.

The other aspect is that for hockey to improve anywhere, you need money in the sport.

Governmrnts and private sponsors are more likely to invest money into hockey as a sport when the team is playing at the top level rather than in lower divisions.

In Hungary hockey was chosen as one of the sports that the government invests into heavily. Would they still do it had Hungary not promoted to the top division in 2008?

 

[alko]

Why? Why all this? It is perfect now. And also with Great Britain and with closed eye Italy. If you push more teams to lower level, the fans will stop following it.

 

[Jakk123]

Mikael Renberg made a good point during a Swedish broadcast. Playing in the highest division and getting blown out half the time doesn't necessarily benefit you, look at teams like Norway and France who've been here for a long time without improving at all. If anything they've gotten worse.

Make advancement to the highest division harder. Lower the amount of teams and then have a best of 3 between the bottom first division team and the top second division team, to filter out teams that aren't good enough.

How has France gotten worse? They had a weak team this year, that doesn't change the fact they beat Finland two years ago. They also played a close game with Canada and missed the QFs by one point. In 2014, they beat Canada, Slovakia, took Czechs to OT and made it to the QFs.

 

[Appleyard]

I mean:

Canada
USA
Russia
Sweden
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Finland
Germany
Switzerland
Latvia

Are the 10 teams who can "play" against each other and generally no-one will be embarrassed at any point... barring a strange game, which happens in the NHL too.

But France were relegated and they only got beaten by 3+ goals once.

There have been 50 game now... how many goal chasms more than 5?

Group A:

USA - France (7-1)
Canada - GB (8-0)
Denmark - GB (9-0)
USA - Denmark (7-1)
Canada - Germany (8-1)
Slovakia - GB (7-1)

3/6 were vs GB... and 1/6 was vs Germany, who had simply one atrocious period, and the game with France was the only game of the tournament they did not at least have a period or so where they played up to the competition.

Group B:

Swiss - Italy (9-0)
Sweden - Italy (8-0)
Sweden - Norway (9-1)
Russia - Italy (10-0)
Sweden - Austria (9-1)
Czech - Italy (8-0)
Norway - Italy (7-1)
Czech - Austria (8-0)

5/8 were vs Italy.

Italy and GB between them have probably ~10 or so players at MAXIMUM who could hold their own at ~AHL level right now, and some of them are tenuous. (Bernard, D. Kostner, Morini, Bowns, O'Connor, D. Phillips, Mosey, Hammond, Dowd, Perlini) Yet both managed to stay up...

But there is also the fact that Denmark and Austria especially are getting better, producing more players in top Euro leagues, and more NHLers. (same for France) And probably have the potential to be at the Latvia/Slovakia level in the next ten years.



And France were missing most of their big hitters, actually probably their best 4 players in: Roussel, Bellemare, Da Costa, Auvitu.

Same for Austria without Grabner, Vanek, Nodl, Ulmer...

 

[unknownbrother]

I mean:

Canada
USA
Russia
Sweden
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Finland
Germany
Switzerland
Latvia

Are the 10 teams who can "play" against each other and generally no-one will be embarrassed at any point... barring a strange game, which happens in the NHL too.

But France were relegated and they only got beaten by 3+ goals once.

There have been 50 game now... how many goal chasms more than 5?

Group A:

USA - France (7-1)
Canada - GB (8-0)
Denmark - GB (9-0)
USA - Denmark (7-1)
Canada - Germany (8-1)
Slovakia - GB (7-1)

3/6 were vs GB... and 1/6 was vs Germany, who had simply one atrocious period, and the game with France was the only game of the tournament they did not at least have a period or so where they played up to the competition.

Group B:

Swiss - Italy (9-0)
Sweden - Italy (8-0)
Sweden - Norway (9-1)
Russia - Italy (10-0)
Sweden - Austria (9-1)
Czech - Italy (8-0)
Norway - Italy (7-1)
Czech - Austria (8-0)

5/8 were vs Italy.

Italy and GB between them have probably ~10 or so players at MAXIMUM who could hold their own at ~AHL level right now, and some of them are tenuous. (Bernard, D. Kostner, Morini, Bowns, O'Connor, D. Phillips, Mosey, Hammond, Dowd, Perlini) Yet both managed to stay up...

But there is also the fact that Denmark and Austria especially are getting better, producing more players in top Euro leagues, and more NHLers. (same for France) And probably have the potential to be at the Latvia/Slovakia level in the next ten years.



And France were missing most of their big hitters, actually probably their best 4 players in: Roussel, Bellemare, Da Costa, Auvitu.

Same for Austria without Grabner, Vanek, Nodl, Ulmer...

We had Kirk drafted by Arizona last year. In 10 years we might have a few NHL experienced players like France do now.

Like I said above, a big part of the roster have been playing together and improving for 3-4 years. People on this forum are too worried about the now and aren't looking at what we can be.

 

[BalticWarrior]

We had Kirk drafted by Arizona last year. In 10 years we might have a few NHL experienced players like France do now.

Like I said above, a big part of the roster have been playing together and improving for 3-4 years. People on this forum are too worried about the now and aren't looking at what we can be.

I guess its mostly because weve seen teams like Italy yo-yoing back and forth from Elite to DIV IA for 15-20 years now with no tangible benefit