Tournament Details

My out of office message at work is up and I am officially on vacation!  Now that work is taken care of I can get really excited and focus on getting packed and ready.  As I mentioned before, I leave on Sunday afternoon and arrive in Ottawa Sunday evening. I have to admit, it feels bit strange to be going to a World Championship tournament where my flight is shorter than the time I'm going to have to be at the airport in advance of said flight!  When I found out I was going to A pool in Ottawa, I was so excited because it is the top level tournament but I'm not going to lie, from a travel perspective this is the most "boring" location I've been to (compared to China, France and Czech Republic).  That said, it does make life much easier, I don't have to worry about packing food or the time change and if I forget something it will be pretty easy to go buy.  And working a tournament in Canada should be an amazing experience since hockey is their national sport.

So on to some of the tournament details and how the IIHF works.  I'm going to the Women's World Championship A pool tournament.  On the women's side, the IIHF sponsors multiple World Championship tournaments at both the senior and u18 levels.  At the senior level, there are 6 "levels" of tournaments.  The winner of each tournament moves up a level and the loser moves down.  Each Olympic year, the top 6 ranked teams automatically qualify and the lower teams have to go though Olympic qualifiers to try to earn the last 2 spots.  The first IIHF tournament I worked was Division 2 in France so I saw the mid-level countries - France, Italy, Great Britain, Denmark, etc.  Last season I worked the u18 A pool tournament, so I saw the top level teams in that age group.  This year I'm at the top level senior tournament, meaning the teams and players I see on the ice will look very similar to those that are on the ice in Russia next year.  Pretty exciting!

This year at the A pool tournament the following countries will be participating - USA, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Russia, Czech Republic and Germany.  In women's hockey, the USA and Canada are years ahead of the other countries, simply because the player pools are deeper and the national federations give the women's programs plenty of funding.  Because of this, in pasts worlds there were lots of blowouts in the early rounds.  In order to make the games more competitive, the IIHF changed the format last year.  The teams are placed in two pools, A pool and B pool for the round robin portion.  The A pool teams are the top 4 ranked teams from last year - Canada, USA, Switzerland and Finland.  B pool includes Sweden, Russia, Germany and Czech Republic, who moved up from Division 1 last year.  This means the very first night of the tournament will feature a USA/Canada game, which is always a battle.  After the round robin portion, the 3rd and 4th place team from Pool A will play a quarterfinal game with the 1st and 2nd place teams from Pool B.  The top two teams in Pool A will receive a bye to the semis and the bottom two teams in Pool B will play a 3 game relegation series, with the loser dropping to division 1 in 2015 (there are no worlds during olympic years).

The games are being played at two different venues in Ottawa.  A pool round robin games are being played at Scotiabank place, home of the NHL's Ottawa Senators.  B pool round robin games are being played at the Nepean Sportsplex, a smaller arena that seats several thousand.  I've read many of the team Canada games are close to being sold out so skating in front of 20,000 fans will be a new experience for me.  Many of the games are going to be broadcast on TSN and I believe a few games may be broadcast on the NHL network so keep a lookout.  Here are some links where you can follow the tournament:

Official Website - http://www.worldwomen2013.com
Hockey Canada's Site - http://www.hockeycanada.ca/en-ca/Team-Canada/Women/World-Championship/2013.aspx
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/WorldWomens?ref=ts&fref=ts

I'll probably post one more time before I leave.  I'll talk about my packing adventures, who I'm traveling with, how I prepared and what I'm doing after the tournament.  Have a good Friday!