IIHF president says assumptions on cancellation of women's tournament are completely false

With the men's World Juniors happening right now in Edmonton, the International Ice Hockey Federation is facing backlash after announcing that it was cancelling the U18 Women's Tournament scheduled for January. To be clear, it wasn't a postponement, but a flat out cancellation for the second year in a row. That said, IIHF Luc Tardif insists many are making the wrong assumptions on why the women's tournament was cancelled while the World Juniors is still going on.

"This is not a gender issue, this is a COVID-19 issue," said Tardif in a news release from the IIHF. "I would ask in turn how is it fair to postpone all the time the top divisions and always to simply cancel the lower divisions? These cancellations have affected six tournaments, not just one, including two men's U20 event that critics seem to conveniently forget."

"In a normal season, we are not cancelling anything. The IIHF is not in the business of cancelling tournaments, we are here to play tournaments. But we are battling circumstances that are out of our control..."

"Is there an economic incentive to host the men's World Championship and World Juniors every year no matter what? Absolutely. But people misunderstand that this is because we favour men's hockey over women's, which is completely false. The revenue generated from these two events enables our federation to survive and support the operation of all other IIHF World Championship events. So if I have to make every effort to host a specific tournament to ensure the survival of other events, then it is my responsibility as IIHF President to do this," he continued.

Tardif also stated one of the biggest issues with moving the tournament now is that Sweden holds the right and would have to agree to give them up in order to do so. As for moving the tournament to later this year in the same country, Tardif said Sweden has already informed him that "the arenas are not available." Tardif also said the men's World Juniors players were already in place in restricted bubbles when the Chairman of the IIHF Medical Committee recommended cancelling upcoming tournaments during a meeting on December 23rd, adding it was too late to cancel by then.

"We have followed the recommendations of the medical committee on every tournament cancellation that was initiated last year. Their recommendations were correct every single time."

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