IIHF announces the groups for the 2023 World Juniors
On Wednesday night, the IIHF announced the groups for the 2023 World Junior Hockey Championship, which are set to begin on December 26th in Halifax and Moncton.
Rather than using the previous tournament's results following the serpentine system, the IIHF has gone back to the past five World Juniors and have ranked teams based on their performance.
As a reminder, there is no relegation from the current World Juniors, that are taking place in Edmonton, with all ten nations returning to the Maritimes in December.
Let's take a look at the groups:
Group A: Canada, Sweden, Czechia, Germany, Austria.
Group B: United States, Finland, Switzerland, Slovakia, Latvia.
The 2023 World Junior Hockey Championship was originally supposed to be held in Novosibirsk and Omsk (Russia), but due to the IIHF's ban, they decided to strip Russia of hosting duties and moved the tournament to Canada.
In their press release, the IIHF mentioned that the schedule for the 2023 World Juniors will be made available in the coming weeks, but as per usual, the tournament will be returning to its Boxing Day start date.
Source: IIHF.
| G | A | PTS | ||
| Kyle Connor | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Alex Tuch | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Owen Power | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Michael Bunting | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Drew Helleson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jirí Kulich | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Isac Lundestrom | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Vladislav Namestnikov | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Nino Niederreiter | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Gabriel Vilardi | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jason Zucker | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Leo Carlsson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Nikolaj Ehlers | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Ross Johnston | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Evgeni Malkin | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Josh Morrissey | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Cole Perfetti | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Bryan Rust | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Mark Scheifele | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Trevor Zegras | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Complete stats | ||||
| STANDINGS 2024-2025 | ||||||
TOP 10 | GP | W | L | OL | PTS | |
Jets | 20 | 17 | 3 | - | 34 | |
Wild | 19 | 13 | 3 | 3 | 29 | |
Hurricanes | 19 | 14 | 5 | - | 28 | |
Devils | 22 | 13 | 7 | 2 | 28 | |
Capitals | 19 | 13 | 5 | 1 | 27 | |
Golden Knights | 20 | 12 | 6 | 2 | 26 | |
Maple Leafs | 20 | 12 | 6 | 2 | 26 | |
Rangers | 18 | 12 | 5 | 1 | 25 | |
Panthers | 20 | 12 | 7 | 1 | 25 | |
Flames | 20 | 11 | 6 | 3 | 25 | |
| Conference | Cumulative | ||||||