WC: Making a better World Championship?

[Exarz]

I think this will be one of the best tournaments, which will likely set a new record for the avarage attendance at the WC's (the current one is 10,289 per game from 1985 WC which was hosted by Czechoslovakia).

The current format of 16 teams in two groups of eight (top four qualifies to QF and the bottom team in each group gets relegated) is probably the best way to go. If more countries want a shot at the top level than they just have to get better. I think countries like Japan, Hungary and Ukraine will soon get their chances. Maybe not tomorrow but in a few years for sure. Who knows, maybe in a decade Ukraine and Kazakhstan could be on a similar level than Latvia and Belarus (all four are pouring money into ice hockey and are KHL nations).

Is it really fair having two nations getting relegated every year? If we're keeping the current system, at least make the teams not reaching the playoffs face each other head to head to determine which is the worst team!

 

[Matte99]

Every year, the same teams get promoted and relegated inside the divisional World Championship divisions and I've been wondering for a few months how to get rid of this. The first thing to do is to only make one team get relegated, since the two teams getting relegated are getting promoted next season again.

From that, there are two ways to go. We could either decrease the amount of teams from 16 to 12 or 14, or we could expand it with more teams.

I've chosen an expansion of the top division to 20 teams, and I'm going to tell you how:

• Four groups with five teams in each. The winner of the group goes directly to the quarter finals, while the 2nd and 3rd placed teams play eight finals (like in the Olympics)
• The 4th and 5th placed team in each group is facing each other head to head in three playout rounds. The winners from the first round stay in the top division, while the losing team goes to the second round and so on. The losing team in the third round is relegated from the top division.

There are also pros and cons from this:

Pros:

• There will be competition in the botton of the group as well
• With the competition, different teams can get relegated every year
• More geographically spread out
• A chance of increasing the hockey interest in the new "expansion teams" (could for example host a future World Championship)

Con:

• High scoring games against the top team vs the bottom team in the group

I've made up four groups from the 2014 February rankings and the standings from Division 1A

Group A:
Sweden
---------------
Czech Republic
Norway
---------------
Denmark
Japan

Group B:
Finland
---------------
United States
Latvia
---------------
Belarus
Hungary

Group C:
Canada
---------------
Switzerland
Germany
---------------
Kazakhstan
Slovenia

Group D:
Russia
---------------
Slovakia
France
---------------
Italy
Austria

Here's an example how it would be:

Quarter finals:
Sweden vs
Finland vs
Canada vs
Russia vs

Eight finals:
Czech Republic vs France
United States vs Germany
Switzerland vs Latvia
Slovakia vs Norway


Playout, first round:
Denmark vs Austria
Belarus vs Slovenia
Kazakhstan vs Hungary
Italy vs Japan

Playout, second round:
Austria vs Hungary
Slovenia vs Japan

Playout, third round:
Hungary vs Japan

Eliminated: Hungary


The best way of doing it would of course be to have it every second of fourth year with qualifications (as in football) but that will probably not happen for a while, so I think this is the best way of doing it at the moment

To create a discussion out of this: What do you think? What is good and what could've been done better? Should there be less teams?

I wouldnt mind it from a sports perspective. Its actually good for lesser team to sometimes see what it takes to be great. They would also get a lot of matchups against lesser teams.

However, who will watch Japan vs Hungary? Empty arenas costs a lot and running such a big tournament would become a debt trap. Maybe in the hockey crazed country of Canada, but in Europe, no way people would go to those low tier games.

 

[Exarz]

I wouldnt mind it from a sports perspective. Its actually good for lesser team to sometimes see what it takes to be great. They would also get a lot of matchups against lesser teams.

However, who will watch Japan vs Hungary? Empty arenas costs a lot and running such a big tournament would become a debt trap. Maybe in the hockey crazed country of Canada, but in Europe, no way people would go to those low tier games.

€1 tickets!

Edit: another option could be selling daily tickets, where you get a ticket to all the games. Would probably attract more people to the non-attractive games. Another option could be selling tickets where you can choose 3 games for one ticket, and depending on which teams you choose, the cheaper of more expensive it gets.

Choosing three home games for the hosting nation is of course more expansive than choosing three Japan games for example.

 

[IceBlacks]

€1 tickets!

Edit: another option could be selling daily tickets, where you get a ticket to all the games. Would probably attract more people to the non-attractive games. Another option could be selling tickets where you can choose 3 games for one ticket, and depending on which teams you choose, the cheaper of more expensive it gets.

Choosing three home games for the hosting nation is of course more expansive than choosing three Japan games for example.

Won't work. I was in Hungary 1 year ago watching Division 1A and they sold only day tickets to attract people to other than Hungary's games. There were almost every time less than 1000 people watching while Hungary's games were sellout.

The only day game witch gathered more than average, maybe 3500 was the game between Italy and Kazakhstan because that game determined if Hungary had promotion on stake at their final game.

They've done this forced selling in World Championships too and added some random games to same package with the games in which the host plays. Result: hardly no one in the stands. At least in Finland 2012 but the ticket prices had some influence on it too.

I don't know if availablity to choose the games to watch in the ticket package could make those "lesser" games more attractive. The problem would be that no one wants to go to those games. There are so many games to watch that it's hard to get every game full. At least in Europe. If I had all the money and time available I would go to watch every senior WC game in every division. But my enthusiasm is shared by too few people

 

[Uncle Rotter]

However, who will watch Japan vs Hungary?

Who will watch Italy vs Slovenia?

 

[Namejs]

Who will watch Italy vs Slovenia?

If you're trying to use that as an argument against the current 16-team format, Italy and Slovenia won't meet as they normally would both be the lowest-ranked teams in the tournament and would play in separate groups as the lowest seeds.

 

[Pominville Knows]

Top-6 ranked teams should play in one pool for number 1-6 playoff seeds. The other pool consists of the next 6 ranked teams playing for the last two spots in the playoffs. Potentially one could even make a third pool of teams and expand the playoffs to either 16 teams, or 12 with four byes.

 

[admire]

Would like to see any format that would allow nhl players to play more for the national teams. Look at the olympic qualifyers. Denmark has quite a few players in the nhl which hurt us massively in olympic qualifying. If the wc decreased the number of teams and held qualifying games in the nhl season, Denmark might never get up.

 

[Exarz]

Would like to see any format that would allow nhl players to play more for the national teams. Look at the olympic qualifyers. Denmark has quite a few players in the nhl which hurt us massively in olympic qualifying. If the wc decreased the number of teams and held qualifying games in the nhl season, Denmark might never get up.

Exactly, it's really unfair.

It can't be hard to let go of their players for a few games..

 

[CanadaKid]

The top division of the IIHF world championship needs to contract from the current 16 teams to 10 or even 8. Where the bottom team gets relegated. This will make the tournament so much more competitive. Also the world championships need to be held every 2 years ( one year offset from the Olympics).

For example the Olympics happened this year in 2014. the world championships should be held 2015, 2017, 2019 while the Olympics are held 2014, 2018, 2022 ect ect

 

[Nizar]

Could you please just stop. Same as treads how to make game better.
The main problem here is IIHF and all power struggles in organization. They are 12 teams who call them self elite (some of them are). and they don't want to play friendly games with other countries, but only between each other. So two of perennial A group teams are not in that group + Slovenia, Italy, Kazakhstan, Austria and so on. I am sure the 12 teams would like to see top group reduced to play all the games between themselves. And that goes against "growing the game of hockey". If you reduced number of teams by two or more someone will not be happy because they will get relegated instead of usual suspects. in any case Austria and Slovenia have proven that they can compete with the best and maybe someone upstairs is afraid that his team will get relegated instead of those two.