2023 IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship preview

A little under four months ago, the rescheduled 2022 World Juniors wrapped up in Edmonton (Alberta) as Kent Johnson scored the overtime winner in the gold medal game to defeat Finland, 3-2.

Flash forward to now and ten nations will embark on Halifax and Moncton in the chase to be crowned 2023 World Junior champion. For the first time since 2020, relegation will occur and whoever is sent down for the 2024 Division 1A tournament will be replaced with Norway, who earned promotion over the weekend.

Instead of the usual way the groups are formed (based on previous tournament results), the International Ice Hockey Federation decided to group the nations together based on their rankings of performance from the previous five tournaments.

Let's take a look at the groups for the 2023 World Juniors.

Group A: Austria, Canada, Czechia, Germany, Sweden.
Group B: Finland, Latvia, Slovakia, Switzerland, United States.

For those who aren't familiar with how the World Juniors are structured, each nation will play four group stage games, with the top-four in each group advancing to the knockout round. The bottom nation in each group will play a best-of-three series against each other, with the loser being relegated to Division 1A for the 2024 tournament, as mentioned.

Preliminary round: December 26th - December 31st.
Quarter-Finals: January 2nd.
Relegation round: January 2nd + January 4th (Jan. 5th, If necessary).
Semi-Finals: January 4th.
Bronze Medal Game: January 5th.
Gold Medal Game: January 5th.

It's probably safe to say that Canada will be the favourites to win the gold medal, as they look to go back-to-back for the first time since 2008 and 2009. Hockey Canada was able to get three NHLers loaned to their roster for the tournament, those players being: Brandt Clarke (Los Angeles), Dylan Guenther (Arizona) and Shane Wright (Seattle), the latter of whom has been named captain.

Along with that trio, Canada has two stars that are set to be top-three picks in the 2023 NHL Entry Draft, Connor Bedard and Adam Fantilli. Add in returning forwards Logan Stankoven, Nathan Gaucher, Brennan Othmann and you've got a solid core up front, with those three not only bringing offense, but also size and grit to Canada's lineup.

On the blue line, Canada has the aforementioned Brandt Clarke, who finally gets to represent his nation at the World Juniors after being looked over for the 2022 tournament. Returning defencemen Olen Zellweger and Ethan Del Mastro will play big roles and in all situations throughout the tournament, likely eating up 22+ minutes per game.

In goal, Canada has two intriguing options with Benjamin Gaudreau and Thomas Milic. There isn't a clear cut number one and there's a good chance they'll split the starts for Canada's first two games of the tournament.

Sweden is also a contender for the gold medal, with plenty of offensive talent such as Noah Ostlund, Filip Bystedt, Liam Ohgren, Jonathan Lekkerimaki and 2023 projected top-five pick Leo Carlsson. Biggest question for the Swedes will be in net, with Golden Knights prospect Carl Lindbom likely to assume the starting role.

Much like Sweden, Finland has plenty of talent up front with Joakim Kemell, Ville Koivunen, Oliver Kapanen, Jani Nyman and Brad Lambert who was loaned by the AHL's Manitoba Moose. On the blue line, this will be many fans first introduction to 2024 projected first-overall pick Aron Kiviharju, who plays for TPS in Liiga. In net, the Finns will more than likely go with Niklas Kokko, a Seattle Kraken prospect.

The fourth and likely final gold medal contender is the United States, who had an extremely underwhelming tournament in August, losing to Czechia in the Quarter-Finals. This tournament, the expectation is the United States will be scoring in droves. Logan Cooley, Tyler Boucher, Jimmy Snuggerud, Cutter Gauthier, Chaz Lucius and Red Savage will drive the offense, but they'll also get production from the blue line in Luke Hughes, Lane Hutson, Sean Beherens and Seamus Casey.

The goaltending situation for the United States is a bit unclear at the moment. Andrew Oke is probably the odd man out and will be the third string, while Trey Augustine and Kaidan Mbereko will compete for the starting role.

Slovakia could play the role of spoiler at this year's tournament. While they weren't able to get Juraj Slafkovsky from the Montreal Canadiens, they were able to get their other two first-round picks from July's draft, Simon Nemec and Filip Mesar. 2023 projected top-ten pick Dalibor Dvorsky will be given an even bigger role with top-six minutes and being on the top powerplay unit, with Servac Petrovsky and Adam Sykora also being key player up front for the Slovaks. Other than Nemec, Slovakia is pretty thin on defence and will struggle for saves in net, especially with Simon Latkoczy aging out.

Czechia likely won't replicate their success from August's tournament, but they will have two key players to ensure they remain competitive and try to pull off an upset. Those two players being David Jiricek and 2023 projected top-ten pick Eduard Sale. Tomas Hamara and Stanislav Svozil will form a three-headed monster along with Jiricek on the blue line for the Czechs. Jiri Kulich and Matyas Sapovaliv will be looked upon heavily to provide offense.

The Swiss always find a way to pull off an upset at any international competition, including the World Juniors. While they won't be flashy with offense, they do have four key players that will need to on their game for Switzerland to have any success at this year's tournament. Dallas' 2022 first-rounder Lian Bichsel, Flyers prospect Brian Zanetti will log a lot of minutes on defence, while Attilio Biasca and Miles Muller will look to put the puck in the back of net. 19-year-old returning goaltender Kevin Pasche will likely take the reigns as the number one.

Germany is also capable of pulling off an upset, but this year's roster is probably the weakest they've sent to the World Juniors in recent years. If Germany is to avoid the relegation round, they'll need to rely on returning players including Julian Lutz and Carolina Hurricanes prospect Nikita Quapp.

Latvia, who will battle with Germany in Group A for the fourth and final Quarter-Final spot, have the significant advantage with two NHL prospects who are excelling in their respective leagues. Bruins prospect Dans Locmelis has 33 points in 27 games in Sweden's junior league with Lulea HF, while Panthers prospect Sandis Vilmanis has 24 points in 29 games with the OHL's Sarnia Sting. The Latvians will also have 21 returning players, the most of any team and that includes standout netminder Patriks Berzins as well as defenceman Bogdans Hodass and Niks Fenenko, who played massive roles in August.

Finally, the Austrian's are in tough for this year's tournament, unless they can overcome a group that features Finland, Slovakia, Switzerland and the United States in order to get the fourth and final Quarter-Final spot. They'll be without Detroit Red Wings 2022 first-round pick Marco Kasper as he was not named to the roster, with Austria wanting him to focus on the Men's National Team from now on. With Kasper out, Montreal Canadiens prospect Vinzenz Rohrer will be look upon to provide the offense, but in all likelihood and barring any massive upset, Austria will finish fifth in their group and face the fifth place team in Group A in the best-of-three relegation series.

Exhibition games get underway starting on Monday, but the preliminary round, as always, will begin on December 26th with the following four games:

- Finland vs Switzerland (11 a.m. ET/12 p.m. local)
- Sweden vs Austria (1:30 p.m. ET/2:30 p.m. local)
- Latvia vs United States (4 p.m. ET/5 p.m. local)
- Canada vs Czechia (8:30 p.m. ET/7:30 p.m. local)

Stay tuned to Markerzone.com throughout the tournament for full coverage and daily recaps beginning on December 26th!

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