The 2022 World Junior Hockey Championship, which was canceled in December early in the round-robin due to COVID-19, will be played in mid-August in Alberta, IIHF president Luc Tardif announced on Thursday.
The IIHF leadership met the media in #Beijing2022, discussed the #Olympic #icehockey tournaments, development, #Milano2026 and announced updates on the events that will be postponed from January to summer.
Read more or watch the press conference: https://t.co/bmMqotaRRn
— IIHF (@IIHFHockey) February 17, 2022
“It will be in the middle of August in Alberta (Canada),” said Thursday from the 2022 Beijing Olympics. “It will be a new competition, which means we forget the results (in December).”
The tournament will be a new competition so the stats and results from the canceled December tournament will be forgotten. Each country will be able to pick new rosters and the tournament will be 2002-born or younger players, just like the original tournament was to be.
“We are talking with all participants and are negotiating on details,” Tardif said. “It will be after the Hlinka Gretzky Cup. It will be a hockey festival, and the teams are excited to do it.”
The 2022 Hlinka Gretzky Cup, which features the top under-18 players in the world, is scheduled for the first week in August in Edmonton/Red Deer.
Relegation will also be reintroduced into the World Juniors. The bottom two teams will play a best-of-three round and the loser will be replaced by Belarus at the 2023 tournament in Novosibirsk and Omsk, Russia which is scheduled to begin play on December 26th.
