What to expect from the Ice Hockey World Championships 2021

Tournament will be played in Latvia, Riga between 21th of May and 6th of june. Main venue will be the wonderful Arena Riga and second venue Olympic Sports Center which is currently going through construction process to offer the best possible experience for the players and fans.

There will be in total 16 teams taking part in the tournament and the biggest favorites are not so surprisingly big ice hockey countries Russia and Canada. But this year preparations have been totally different because of the covid pandemic, which can make a big difference when the puck is being dropped.

IIHF World Championships 2021 predictions:

There are many question marks coming to the tournament. How has each team been able to practise together? How early will they know their available squad? How will they perform in a more restricted environment? All these things will have an effect on the relative strength of the teams. Some teams can handle it better than the others and it can lead to bigger surprises than you normally see in IIHF World Championships.

Some countries might also lack many of their key players because of Covid related restrictions or just because players might be less willing to take the risk and travel to foreign countries or continents. This might cause the biggest favorites to show up with a little bit weaker teams this year which could benefit the smaller countries.

There are rumours that for example Russian national team will be facing many refusals among their key players. This might be the case with any other country as well, so it will be interesting to see what happens.

In our opinion this is only a good thing. You don’t want to see matches going 8-2 between the favorite and the challenger. It makes the whole tournament more exciting when smaller countries are able to put pressure and challenge bigger ice hockey countries. This can happen in the 2021 World Championships.

Finns are known to be passionate when it comes to IIHF World Championships and every year the event is one of the most followed sporting events of the year. You can follow and enjoy ice hockey and all other sports and casino from Finnish local outlet Bonuskoodit.com.

Ice Hockey World Championships 2021 matches

Tournament starts 21st of may with a group stage. 16 teams are divided into two groups and during the group stage each country will face all teams in their group once. 4 out of 8 teams in each group will then advance to playoffs, where teams will play best of one match -series until there are two teams left. Those two countries will face each other in the Ice Hockey World Championships final on 6th of june.

Here are the countries taking part to the tournament:

Group A

Switzerland
Slovakia
Denmark
Belarus
Great Britain

Group B
Canada
Finland
United States
Germany
Latvia
Norway
Italy
Kazakhstan

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