IHWC may be cut to 14
Don't know whether this has been mentioned yet, but at the bi-annually IIHF meeting it was decided to cut the number of participating countries in the men's world championship from 16 to 14.
The format has yet to be detailed but it will probably be two groups with 7 countries each. No details on whether there will be any playdowns.
Also, the timing has yet to be decided. It could either be in 2010 (Germany), 2011 (Slovakia) or in 2012 (Finland)
Any thoughts?
Last edited by Karsten; 19-12-2007 at 04:41.
I have one: F***!!!!!!
Anybody have anything to add to that?
Seems that I was a little bit to hasty, so let me be precise:
It hasn't officially been decided yet, but the IIHF's Sport Committee will propose to cut the number of teams from 16 to 14.
source: http://www.iihf.com/home-of-hockey/n...ash=2760fdb8d5Originally Posted by IIHF
---
But yes, I guess it will be adopted because this is what the big boys want.
So we will have days where teams are not playing and teams having back to backs etc against a fresh team.
Idiotic but not surprising.
I'll follow it with "That."
Also for the reason SwissHockeyAcademy mentions, but what a mess this will send down through the divisions. Relegating two teams from each division in one year? Madness. It could adjust those slaughter games, but moving better teams downward will do nothing to improve that, especially considering Division III.
Karsten said it best, this is just for the big boys, but who will be the first complain when they will have to play those back-to-back games against a fresh team?
Bringing ice hockey to Northwest China!
I'm thehole formerly known as KazakhEagles
This is just plainly stupid. It will, of course make it even harder for small nations to stay up. However, making it 2 groups with 7 teams will make a little less random who ends in the relegation round. I hope Denmark can use this as an advantage.
I am not totally against that proposal. The lower elite teams didn't manage to close in on the top teams in the years of the 16 format and if the playingformat on the second and lower levels is reformed as well there could be something really interesting emerging if it is done right.
First think they should get rid of the parallel groups on each level which only lead to unbalanced tournaments. That would be a good start.
And yes I think just to give some teams the chance to play a couple of games at IHWC against the big boys doesn't make the hockey program in these countries better - think of Japan: years of IHWC exposure and no improvement...
To improve the national teams the whole system has to be improved in a country (or player development to be outsourced ;-) and IHWC exposure is imho neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for that. I know this is an unpopular view so you are welcometo club me ;-)
Completely agree. This is the biggest issue with the current set-up, not the number of teams at the top level.
Graham.
"It's very hard to talk quantum using a language originally designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is."
---
"Night Watch", Terry Pratchett
14 teams sounds like a bad idea when you think about 7 teams in each group. I would prefer them to make it 12 teams in 2 groups where the 4 best in each group advance to quarter finals and so on.
Regarding division 1 and lower I wonder if it would be possible to find organizing countries if there would be more than 6 teams in each division. What if division 2 was 12 teams. Which countries could organize that?
I don't think we are proposing increasing the size of each tournament. Instead, we are saying that Division 1 should be 6 teams, Division 2 should be 6 teams, as will be Division 3, 4 and 5. The problem with splitting the divisions into groups is that it means the quality is too stretched. So, the team being promoted only has a realistic chance of beating the 5th seed. If they lose that game, they get relegated back down. If you had Division 1 for the seniors as being the 17th to 22nd seeded teams in teams and Division 2 as the 23rd to 28th seeded teams, the promoted Division 2 team would be playing only those teams immediately above it. Instead, the promoted Division 2 side seeded 28th plays the 17th, 20th, 21st, 24th and 25th seeded teams. It's no wonder that teams just keep bouncing between the divisions.
Great Britain would lose out in this system, and still I think it's a good idea!
Graham.
"It's very hard to talk quantum using a language originally designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is."
---
"Night Watch", Terry Pratchett
I certainly agree with that reasoning. It could be 8 teams though. Especially for division 1.
Regarding the top division I feel that the most important thing is to make every game count. Today it isn't really like that.
Then lets go to 12 teams then. More balanced.
Or 8 if you want every game to count. We have the World Cup where the top teams can compete - every game counts here. The IHWC is something different.
This seems like a bad idea to me.
If its 2 groups of 7 that would mean more round robin games that the fans don't really care about. If its 4 groups of 4 each game means a lot more thus increasing the excitment level/fan interest.
The only reason I could see for doing this is if it's a situation like Moscow was where only the Russian games were very well attended and this would mean more games for the host team and more attendance revenue.
So I don't know. There's pros and cons for both. We'll see how it goes.
Six is a great number. You can do it over 5 days of playing with 2 off-days to fit it within a week. And everyone plays on every single day. As soon as you go to 8 days, the competition has to become 7 days of playing, which means you need more than 2 days of rest during the competition. Also, I'd question if you can really host 4 games a day. So, for me, 6 is ideal, because it is a number that all countries can manage.
Graham.
"It's very hard to talk quantum using a language originally designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is."
---
"Night Watch", Terry Pratchett
Division 1 is balanced enough (excluding the 6th seeds in each group) that I don't think it's neccessary to to divide it, I'd agree with the lower divisions, but if anything I'd expand D1. I've thought about this format for a while: Div I seems to have balanced out over the life of the current format (at least when Romania and Croatia are up every game can remain semi-competitive) but the gap between D1 and D2 seems to be getting larger rather than smaller.
So my idea would have D1A and D1B both have 8 teams, but to further segregate them into groups of four. Have each team play the other 3 teams in their group and then cross-over in the "playoffs" 1 v 2, 3 v 4 with the winners of 1v 2 fighting for promotion and the losers of 3 v 4 fighting for relegation. This would 1: hopefully help close some of the gap between D1 and D2; and 2: eliminate the reliance on goal differential when it comes to promotion. The strength of schedules wouldn't change much except for the 4th seeded team in each group which would face almost level D1 and a half competition rather than D2 level competition.
For example this year would have looked something like this:
Division 1A
Group 1 | Group 2
Austria | Poland
Great Britain | Kazakhstan
Netherlands | South Korea
Belgium | Romania
Division 1B
Group 1 | Group 2
Ukraine | Hungary
Estonia | Japan
Lithuania | Croatia
Australia | China
Assuming things went to as expected:
Austria would face a similar schedule to now. The only difference would be adding a game against Belgium but subtracting a game against South Korea.
Belgium would add Austria, Poland, Great Britain & South Korea while dropping Spain, Iceland, Bulgaria & Ireland.
The fifth best team in each group (in this case Netherlands & Lithuania) would be the only stable D1 teams to suffer a real schedule decrease. Netherlands would play Romania & South Korea instead of Poland & Kazakhstan. However, if you drop the IHWC to 14 teams, these will be the teams bouncing between D1 and D2, anyway.
If you can host four games a day, eveything can be done within one week's timeframe. D1A's schedule would look like this:
Day 1: Austria v Belgium, Great Britain v Netherlands, Poland v Romania, Kazakhstan v South Korea
Day 2: Austria v Netherlands, Great Britain v Belgium, Poland v South Korea, Kazakhstan v Romania
Day 3: Break
Day 4: Austria v Great Britain, Netherlands v Belgium, Poland v Kazakhstan, South Korea v Romania
Day 5: Break
(assuming it goes as the seeds are laid out)
Day 6: (1) Austria v (2) Kazakhstan, (1) Poland v (2) Great Britain, (3) Netherlands v (4) Romania, (3) South Korea v (4) Belgium
Day 7: (10 Austria v (1) Poland, (2) Great Britain v (2) Kazakhstan, (3) Netherlands v (3) South Korea, (4) Belgium v (4) Romania
(This is all with regards to the senior level, not youth levels which aren't competitive enough)
I don't agree. The groups may be balanced, but they are also pretty predictable. A great tournament is one where teams are capable of beating more than the teams that they finish above. The positions in Division 1 have been pretty stable for a few years now; the team coming up gets relegated, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Estonia and Japan are in the lower reaches of the groups and Poland, Hungary, France and Italy are in the upper reaches. Because of the stretched nature of the overall seedings within the groups, there is too large an element of predictability.
Sorry, but this is way too complicated and it still doesn't remove the massively one-sided top v bottom games (in 2007, France 10 China 0 and Romania 1 Slovenia 10, in 2006, Israel 2 Germany 11 and Croatia 0 Austria 6, despite being outshot 52-13; and in each case I'd argue that the winning team barely broke sweat). These are the games that need to be removed, but your change makes them even worse, as top v bottom is now spread over 16 places overall.
I also think you have to be very careful on increasing the size of the groups. The IIHF are unlikely to allow more than 2 consecutive game days (Great Britain were only allowed 3 consecutive days for the Women's Division 3 last year because nobody wanted to host it, including Great Britain). That means an 8 team tournament requires 7 game days spread over 10 days. And that assumes you are able to get 4 games a day, and I've seen many ice rinks at this level that couldn't handle that. So, you now have to take the extra factors of quality of ice, number of dressing rooms, hotel space in the immediate area and number of required officials into consideration.
All of a sudden, countries now need to significantly increase their costs in hosting. And remember, even at Senior Division 1, nobody goes to games that don't involve the home nation. While you may have increased the number of those games from 5 to 7, more importantly, you have increased the number of games for which you can't sell tickets from 10 to 21.
If we remove the pointless splitting of divisions, this year we would have (assuming 1 up/1 down from last year):
Division 1
Ukraine
France (on the grounds that they are the lower seed to Slovenia, and so would not have got the sole promotion spot)
Hungary
Poland
Kazakhstan
Japan
Division 2
Estonia
Great Britain
The Netherlands
Lithuania
Romania (on the grounds that they are the higher seed to China, and so would not have got relegated)
Croatia (on the grounds that they are the higher seed to South Korea, and so would have got the sole promotion spot)
I defy anyone to say that this isn't more exciting than what we've got. More games of genuine interest rather than numbing predictability. Division 1 is a cracker of a tournament, and I even think that Division 2 has great interest in it when you consider that last year, Romania, this would-be division's 5th seed got an OT defeat to a team that would be in the higher group (Japan). As a result, you have games where anything genuinely could happen. Easier to sell tickets for, easier to sell TV rights for, easier to get sponsorship for...
Graham.
"It's very hard to talk quantum using a language originally designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is."
---
"Night Watch", Terry Pratchett
Graham, looks pretty good but how many divisions does your scheme add up to all in all?
Just a slight correction Graham, you may have misunderstood this part of fan75's post - the number of games played by each nation remains at 5, not 7 (3 games vs the games in your sub-group, then only 2 games afterwards). Thus, the number of games not-involving the host team does go up from 10, but only to 15 (there are only 20 games overall).
But I do agree that the divisions should be split vertically, not horizontally as they are now (I made a similar suggestion a few years ago http://www.forums.internationalhocke...read.php?t=109 )
There is no such thing as a "Bad Hockey Market"
There are, however, several markets with "Bad Hockey"
International Hockey Forums on Social Media:
https://twitter.com/ihf_forums
https://www.facebook.com/ihf.forums
Games of any of the top seeds in your format against any of the bottom seeds are imho completely useless. What should it bring if Belgium is hammered by Kazakhstan and I'm more than sure that it would be like this (same goes for e.g. example given AUT or UKR vs. China or Australia)? Grosso modo the top seeded teams in your example are all consisting of pro players whereas the bottom teams are made up of amateurs. That doesn't make sense.
The skill decrease from the teams in the lower elite/top div I. to the teams in bottom div I/top div II is simply too big. It's too big for making 2 parallel groups of 6 from the teams ranked 17 (neglecting that therelegated teams may be ranked even higher) to 28. And if it is too big for this it is certainly to big to put 16 teams together like this. Non parallel groups of 6 would imho be perfect. A tourney of {AUT, UKR, KAZ, HUN, POL, GBR, JAP} would be great - still there's favourites and underdogs but suspense guaranteed and no ex ante obvious mismatches.
Actually Steigs fully expressed my thoughts as well (post #2)
I could only add my five cents. Hey, Fasel, you can make it back to 12 since there is no more relegation threat for Switzerland.
Nothing to declare.
So long the IHWC are played every year 12 team are the best. 12 teams in the IHWC and 8 teams in one B-IHWC.
I dont think it will hurt the development of hockey in the lower rank hockeynationens. I have followed the IHWC since the beging of the 80:s And the changes in internationalhockey are:
1. Finland have take the step and are one of the leading hockeypowers and Slovakia have joint the top groupe after the split of Czechoslovakia.
2. United states have been stronger and can be the number one hockeypower in a near future.
3. Germany have faild to take the step, Germany and Finland was close in the 70:s and the 80:s but Germany are to day longer from the top when they was in the end of the 80:s and the begining of the 90:s.
4. Switzerland have develop since the 80:s and have some very good results in the juniors but the senior team have not come closer the top the last 10 years. It seams like the swiss hockeyprogram can develop good players but not exelent players.
5. The new countrys in Central Europe and East Europe have increased the numbers of teams in the level just below the top teams in hockey, teams like Belarus, Latvia, Kazakstan and Ukraine are att level whit Germany and Switzerland.
So I dont think it will hurt to go back to a smaller IHWC, the only thing for the nations rank 8-18 to do if they want to take the next step are to develop there hockey infrastructure and increse the number of players. Nothing happends just becurse they play in IHWC whit the big boys. The best is to go back to a B-IHWC whit eight teams for this nations. A IHWC-B whit:
Italy
Norway
Ukraine
Kazakhstan
Austria
Slovenia
France
Poland
have been a strong torunament and good for the development of hockey in this countrys. Is no short couts if a nations wants to be a superpower in hockey, its allways the finnish model of increse the infrastructure, increse the players and increse the skill level of the coaches and leaders so they can increse the skill level on the players. Switzerland are very close to do it.
The most improved hockeynation in the last 10 years are Denmark but if Denmark will be a contender for the top 3 places in the championsship they must work on the infrastructure. The same as Latvia and Belarus.
Hockey are a very hard and expensiv sport to develop. Its the most expensiv sport if you want to improve its infrastructure, it dont cost mutch to make a soccer field but it cost a lot to make a new rink. soccer dont cost mutch to play but to play hockey you must pay a lot, hockey gear are expanesive. So its a more difficult process to make a hockey nation, only countrys whit frost on the winter and nations whit artificial indoor rinks can develop hockey.
If you keep the top division to 16, then you would have an elite division plus Divisions 1 to 5 and a Division 5 qualifier.
Graham.
"It's very hard to talk quantum using a language originally designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is."
---
"Night Watch", Terry Pratchett
or bad you mean, my english is bad on the mornings lmao:/
Comment to my post earlier, what is IHWC wanna get out from cutting teams? are they retarded?
shall FIFA cut the world cup to 10 team beacuse that Germany , Spain , Italy, Brazil, Argentina os to much favourites each year? or what?
really sick if they do so let the top division be 16, i dont have anymore commetns on this...
Let worser team have the opporunity to make an upset once in a while, that must pretty much be the "it thing" with sports isnt it?
I would like to keep the 16-teams tournament because there will always be some kind of surprises which can turn things around. Don't forget the tie between Denmark and Canada and the Denmark's win over USA when USA had to play against relegation in 2003 WC. Something should be done for the formation of the tournament. It's true that it's hard to sell tickets for the games in the second phase especially for tourists coming around the world to see the games of their favourite team. But how it should be changed? I don't know. And if no one else knows then it may be better to move to the 14-teams tournament.
Lol a sick idea that i dont believe in myself... sorry for posting it then but have to^^
Like this maybe, top 10 ranked is already competing in WC. then 6 - 8 teams play each other somehow and play for like 2 - 4 places with the big boys..
Cause i think its tighten up down under Top division so i think 2 more teams can have a brief shot of making it with big boys..
what u think of that?
I like the idea of a two-part tournament. The main event with 12 teams and another with 8 teams earlier in the year. 8 best according to IIHF-ranking directly into the main tournament and eight lesser teams compete for the last four spots. Six best countries of this pre-tournament get to keep their spot in the elite level and two last ones go to Div I.
In the "actual" IHWC, two groups of six. The winner from each group goes directly to semis and slots 2-3 play the quarterfinal. Every game in the main event would matter this way.
It'd also make the extreme skill differences between the teams more hidden. We'd still get matches like Finland-Switzerland where the Swiss certainly have a shot at it, but would avoid the ones like Finland-Italy where the latter hasn't (yet) a snowflake's chance in hell for an upset.
UPGRADE NOW: Laho 2.0: An all-new interface, improved outlook, refitted AI, better stick handling and a whole new load of lousy jokes. 100% HPK compatible.
Yeah I really don't see what the problem is...I love the World Championships with the 16 teams as it is. You get to see teams you usually don't see...sometimes they surprise you and play great...sometimes you get circus games like the Canada-Latvia one lol...but I really don't see why the IIHF has to complain.
It's the same with the NHL...I think it's great the way it is...so scoring is a bit down, tell the scorers to score more bloody goals and stop screwing with the game itself! Hockey is more than just scoring...ahhh sometimes the hockey world makes me mad lol..
I don't like the current setup, because in the first phase the weaker teams basically have to concentrate on the one game versus the other weaker team in the group to avoid relegation round.
For example, this year, even if Denmark wins versus Russia, the win is worthless if they loose against Italy.
I want to see a worldchampionship whit 10 teams. Like the junior championships. 16 teams are way to much. We have only 48 activ nations in the hockey world so 10 teams in the World championship are enough for the moment.
If the hockey world grows and more teams develop we can have more teams in the future. So take it down to 14 teams are a step in right direction.
The world championship shall not be a forum of development for the small countrys it shall be a forum to descide the best team in the world.
The big problem like I see it are Div. 1. Why have two DivI? Its better to have one divion 1 whit eight teams.
I will see:
IHWC:
Sweden
Canada
Finland
Czech.republic
Russia
Slovakia
USA
Switzerland
Belarus
Latvia
Div I:
Denmark
Germany
Norway
Slovenia
Italiy
France
Austria
Ukraine
Its better and will created a much more intressting championship both in the World championship and in Div I. For Sweden and the outher 3-4 gold contenders the Worldchampionship will start first in the QF and this is not good for the sport.
10 or 12? no. I want to see different teams in there, i'm so tired these finland vs russia/czech/sweden matchups, off course its tight games but still. Sometimes smaller countries suprises and so, but the same ten teams every year, i don't like that. Other thing i would like to see is qualifying tournament or something for IHWC, like the two worst teams in IHWC and two best div.1 teams fight for spots in next years tournament. thx.
True, go for the current system and see what it brings in a couple of years time..
All in all IIHF´s goal is to evaluate hockey world wide and i have the trust in them that they take right decisions in their way to reach their goals..
Interestingly FIHA president Heikki Hietanen was interviewed during an intermission in the Czech EHT tourney and he echoed Graham's model pretty accurately. I only caught part of that interview though.
"Lord Baelish, what you suggest is treason."
"Only if we lose."
A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
Clearly an intelligent man...
Maybe I should patent my tournament format design...
Graham.
"It's very hard to talk quantum using a language originally designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is."
---
"Night Watch", Terry Pratchett
I second that. Please license it to both IIHF and EA Sports.Maybe I should patent my tournament format design...
Graham.
Bringing ice hockey to Northwest China!
I'm the
I know this might sound stupid, but why not leave the teams to the current number and organise them into two groups of 8? It would mean only one game more in the first round as opposed to the 14 team format. I think it would be interesting, and, by playing 7 games each, no team can blame bad luck or any of the same for relegating or not making the quarter finals. The one thing is though that the tournament should be scheduled over a longer time this way...
"It is hard to see a black cat in a dark room, especially when it isn't there."
hehe
Nightmare, nice idea, but you would end up with 70 games instead of the current 56, i.e., 25% more games! That's not realistic. I guess that's the only reason they want to go down to 14, to keep the number of games on the same level, but split teams into two groups only.
I'd love to see more games!
I like the two-of-eight format, just in that every game counts towards the QF.
If you see an upset like GER over SVK, it doesn't get erased from the standings for the QF (i'm just using this as an example, and assuming that the win would be clean).
Might make things a bit more interesting for teams if every game "counted", instead of teams playing just to win one game to stave off the relegation round.
Then relegation would be easy too: last team in each prelim group is the "worst", and gets relegated straight-up.
Yes, and increasing to 70 games will also mean that the tournament would have to last longer than the current set-up of 16 days (ie, 3 weekends and 2 weeks). I am sure these are the logistics they do not want to get into.Nightmare, nice idea, but you would end up with 70 games instead of the current 56, i.e., 25% more games! That's not realistic. I guess that's the only reason they want to go down to 14, to keep the number of games on the same level, but split teams into two groups only.
I am against dropping to 14 teams (from 16), but I do see one positive: I would simplify the actual tournament so casual fans would be able to follow more closely. I have heard so many people who don't normally follow the IHWC ask "how exactly does this format work?" and get confused....
There is no such thing as a "Bad Hockey Market"
There are, however, several markets with "Bad Hockey"
International Hockey Forums on Social Media:
https://twitter.com/ihf_forums
https://www.facebook.com/ihf.forums
I know it would be harder, but it sure would be a lot more fun :D
"It is hard to see a black cat in a dark room, especially when it isn't there."
Not bad idea - just wait one year so we can come back.
JE !! SE !! NI !! CE
What does that mean for other divisions? Will div1 have 14 teams too?
Nederlandse IJshockey Bond
www.nijb.nl
8 team groups, basically one more blowout result each group then. Yeah, "lot more fun".. nhl players just get pissed
A1 B1 C1 D1
A2 B2 C2 D2
A3 B3 C3 D3
A4 B4 C4 D4
A5 B5 C5 D5
E | F |G |H
A1 B1 C1 D1 with 3 points
B2 C2 D2 A2 with 2 points
C3 D3 A3 B3 with 1 point
D4 A4 B4 C4 with 0 point
Relegation
A5
B5
C5
D5
Quarters
E1 vs F2
E2 vs F1
G1 vs H2
G2 vs H1
what do you think?
10 games per team.
Ice hockey in GREECE is back !!!
if i understand that right.. 5 groups? 20 teams? it just too many many teams i think... gap between 1st and 20th team/nation would be too big
Beautiful!
I would however change the quarters:
E1 vs G2
E2 vs G1
F1 vs H2
F2 vs H1
That way I would reduce the risk that two teams from the same preliminary group would meet eachother in a quarter final.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote