IIHF World Championship of Ice Hockey 2010

The 74^th annual IIHF World Championship of Ice Hockey takes place May 7^th through 23^rd, 2010, being held over 3 Germany cities: Gelsenkirchen’s Veltins-Arena, Mannheim’s SAP Arena, and Cologne’s Lanxess Arena.

In the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) World Championships, the competition is between sixteen teams.

In the Preliminary Rounds, teams are initially broken down into four gropus made of four teams a piece. The teams in each group compete against each other for the 1st elimination round, knocking out the poorest performing team in each group – leaving 12 teams to move onto the next round.

• Group A is Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Slovakia
• Group B is Canada, Italy, Latvia, and Switzerland
• Group C is the Czech Republic, France, Norway, and Sweden
• Group D is Denmakr, Finland, Germany, and the USA

In the next round, the Relegation Round, the remaining 12 teams will be broken down into 2 new groups – with the best 3 teams in group A and group D battling it out in group E, and the teams in group B and C battling in group F.

The IIHF World Hockey Championships will continue to this way through the Quarter Finals into the Semi-Finals and finally the last two matches for the top two teams (the Gold Medal match) and second placing two teams (the Bronze medal match).

For a little help weighing the odds in these upcoming matches, we can look at the recent 2010 IIHF World U20 Championship, in which the winners were the US team, with Canada taking the silver, finishing just one game behind them. Sweden then took the Bronze, beating Switzerland by six games.

After that will come a Relegation Round, in which the four teams in last place will vie for the last two remaining spots in the Quarter Finals, four games in which the four top teams in each of Groups E and F will battle for the four spots in the Semi-finals with the two last-place teams in each group dropping out. That leaves only one more elimination to find the two teams vying for the Gold Medal and the two teams vying for the Bronze.

At the recent 2010 IIHF World U20 Hockey Championship, the USA took the gold, beating silver medalists Canada by one game, finishing 6-5. The bronze medal went to Sweden who tromped Switzerland 11 games to 4.

The opening game of the 2010 IIHF World Championship is between last year’s silver medalists the United States taking on this year’s event hosts, Germany.

Check out SportsBook Promo Codes to bet on your favorite sports!