IIHF Announces Schedule for World Junior Championships

The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) has announced its schedule for the World Junior Championships.

The event will be staged in Canada’s biggest hockey cities from 26 December 2014 to 5 January 2015. It will be the 11th World Juniors hosted in Canada and the first time the event will come to Toronto. Montreal hosted the event once, in 1978.

Host Canada will play the preliminary round at Bell Centre in Montreal and face defending champion Finland, the United States, Slovakia, and Germany in Group A.

Group B will be played at Air Canada Centre in Toronto with Sweden, Russia, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and newly-promoted Denmark.

Norway, losers of the best-of-three relegation series today against Germany, will play in the Division I Group A in 2015.

The groups are based on the final ranking of this year’s event in Malmö. The schedule will be determined later.

Toronto and Montreal will each host one preliminary-round group and two of the cross-over quarter-final games. Toronto will also host both semi-final games, medal games, and relegation games.

Sales for event packages have already started. Ticket packages for Toronto and Montreal can be ordered online as well as at the box offices of the arenas.

Montreal and Toronto – with reversed roles – will also host the 2017 IIHF World Junior Championship. The 2016 edition will take place in Finland in cities to be announced later. In 2018 the tournament moves to the United States, the 2019 event will be held in Canada and in 2020 it will take place in the Czech Republic.

Groups 2015 IIHF World Junior Championship

A full schedule can be found at this site.