IHWC: Preliminary round

The weirdest preliminary round of the current format men's international hockey world championships is over. Whew!

Having said that, it's somewhat surprising that our initial prediction is spot on except for two things: Canada lost to Switzerland, and, well, Group D. The Americans lost the deciding game to Finland entirely on their own, and Denmark surprised everybody. If anyone says they saw that coming, they're lying. A couple of days before the tournament, Sweden and Denmark played a friendly match, which Denmark lost something like 12-3. Nevertheless, they beat the US and Finland.

Here's the two qualification round groups, with each team's points:

Group E

Russia (6)
Denmark (3)
Germany (3)
Slovakia (3)
Finland (3)
Belarus (0)

Group F

Switzerland (6)
Canada (3)
Sweden (3)
Czech Republic (3)
Norway (3)
Latvia (0)

And this is how they'll play out.

Group E

Russia (15)
Finland (12)
Slovakia (9)
Germany (6)
--
Denmark (6)
Belarus (0)

Russia will sweep the round, while Finland will beat both Slovakia and Belarus. Slovakia will defeat Germany and Denmark, and those two will beat Belarus. Germany and Denmark end up with 6 points each, and Germany goes through on strength of their win over Denmark in the opening round.

We think Denmark's leaky defense won't stand a chance against either Russia's or Slovakia's high-powered offense, and the Germans' game won't cut it either, although they have a better chance against Slovakia. The Slovaks are the biggest question mark of this group, and if Denmark can put together another solid game, they have an outside shot at making the playoffs.

Group F

Canada (12)
Sweden (9)
Czech Republic (9)
Switzerland (9)
--
Norway (6)
Latvia (0)

After losing to Switzerland and having Steven Stamkos taken out of the lineup, we expect the Canadians will start playing and sweep the round. Sweden will beat the Swiss and Latvians, and so will the Czechs, with Switzerland defeating Norway for the fourth spot.

This is going to be a very tight group, with three teams tied for points and ranked by goal differential. Any game going into overtime will change everything, so it's highly unlikely this will stand. It wouldn't even take a huge miracle for Norway to land a spot in the quarterfinals! Therefore, the following predictions are, at best, tentative.

Quarterfinals

Russia - Switzerland
Finland - Czech Republic
Sweden - Slovakia
Canada - Germany

Semifinals

Russia - Sweden
Canada - Finland

Medal games

Gold: Russia - Canada
Bronze: Finland - Sweden

Three of these four countries have been in the final four of every hockey world championship in this decade bar three, and two of them were represented in those as well. They're also the top four countries of the IIHF world ranking. That didn't really inform our predictions, but it's what we end up with. Also, they're the same ones we had in the medal games prior to the opening round, except we thought the Americans would be in the bronze medal game. Well, that went differently.

We still think Canada will win the tournament, but we'd like to be wrong. We didn't think the Habs would win, either, but that sure felt good too.