The Ice Hockey World Championship is an internationally-acclaimed international men's ice hockey competition organized by the International Ice Hockey Federation. First held in the 1920 Summer Olympics, this is the highest-profile yearly international hockey tournament. It's also one of the most expensive and prestigious ice hockey tournaments in the world. There are 12 teams in all.
The Ice Hockey World Championship is divided into two parts. The first phase is a qualification, in which teams are qualified based on their performance in the previous year's World Cup. The next stage is the world hockey championship, in which the winning team are the one qualified from the preliminary round. The countries where the Ice Hockey World Championship will be played already been decided as part of the tournament schedule.
Annually, two teams will represent the USA and Canada. This year's championship will be played in Austria. Austria is a really famous ice-making country, so you can probably expect to see plenty of NHL players in Austria. Forward Alexander Ovechkin is just another potential player for Team USA.
Competitors for the Ice Hockey World Championship comprise both national teams and international teams from throughout the world. The players for each team consist of all members of these teams and other invitees. These include current players and invitees from minor-league leagues and minors around the world.
In the past, the worldwide period of the Ice Hockey World Championships has been somewhat on the low-budget side, with only a select few countries being able to afford tickets and travel costs. The World Games committee has increased the amount of countries that will be included in the tournament from five to the World Cup teams. Russia and Sweden are the primary countries involved. The International Ice Hockey Federation has also announced that the tournament will enlarge into a four-team phase starting with Russia and Sweden in the first year of the contest.
The worldwide ice hockey tournaments are held in the US every year since the 1920 summer Olympics in France. The Ice Hockey World Championships, which is a part of the Olympic Committee, is also held in America. The tournament has been running for almost 100 years now, so it is reasonable that the international stage has been getting busier. Twenty-one countries will be participating in this year's competition, which will be held in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and Boston.
Canada isn't without competition. The last three world championships' participants have been Russia, Sweden and the United States. The Canadians haven't won the gold medal however, although they came second to the Americans in this year's tournament.
Sweden is a team that also competes at the highest level internationally. Both countries have gone pretty far in their history against each other. The Canadians have not been the easy victors in these past two tournaments against the Swedes, but neither has Canada. So this is going to be a very interesting tournament to watch and I'm very confident that the Canadians can overcome their contest. I also think it is going to be an interesting battle between the US and Sweden for the medals as well.
