Denmark are pre-tournament favourites to earn promotion, but five other teams will have something to say about that in the coming week.
photo: Andrea Cardin / IIHF
One of the feel-good stories of the 2021 and 2022 IIHF Women’s World Championships was the return to the top level by Denmark. They had played way back at the second ever IIHF Women's Worlds in 1992, then were demoted to the lower levels for nearly three decades before finally earning promotion to the 2021 IIHF Women’s Worlds. Because of COVID-19, they were not sent down to I-A even though they finished last, but in 2022, another 10th-place finish sealed their fate. Now, with a veteran roster, they have a chance to return to the top pool.
But so do five other nations.
Denmark will be joined by hosts China, Austria, Netherlands, Norway, and Slovakia in Shenzen for a six-team, round-robin tournament. Both the winner and second-place finisher will be promoted to the top level of the IIHF Women’s World, Championship for April 2024 in Utica, New York (Hungary and France having been demoted after the 2023 WW top level). Because of their recent successes, Denmark has to be considered one of the favourites, but their path will not be an easy one. And, at the other end, teams have to remember that while promotion may be on the line for some, demotion to I-B for one team could also become reality.
Hosts China present an interesting contrast of expectations. On the one hand, they might be considered the team most likely to be demoted because they are the team that was most recently promoted from I-B, in 2022. As often happens, a team comes up, only to go back down quickly. France, for instance, earned promotion out of I-A of the senior Women’s Worlds in 2022, only to finish last at the 2023 WW and get demoted to I-A for 2024.
However, this Chinese team doesn't present your typical I-B roster. Because China hosted the 2022 Olympics, it received an automatic bye to play, but far from being an unwarranted addition, they surprised fans with their play. Indeed, they won two of their four games and finished ahead of Denmark in the final standings.
Their first-ever Olympic goal was scored by Le Mi (Hannah Miller), who was also part of that I-B team that earned promotion in 2022. And therein lies the duality. The lineup starting this week in Shenzen is awfully close to the Olympic and I-B rosters from 2022, so the team has both some success in their recent memory as well as important amounts of experience gained from the Beijing Olympic Games.
The name that stands above all others is captain and longtime national team member Baiwei Yu. A native of Harbin, the 35-year-old Yu played at three top-level Women’s Worlds in a row (2007-09) as well as two Olympics (2010, 2022). She has been captain for more than a decade and is the senior member of the team, both in age and reputation.
The player they will rely upon the most, however, might well be goalie Tiya Chen (Tiya Chan) who backstopped the team to that crucial 6-2 win over Poland on the final day of the I-B tournament last year, which earned them promotion to I-A this year. Chen also played one game at the Olympics. Up front, Qiqi Lin (Leah Lum) is a returnee from both Olympics and WW-I-B. In fact, she scored two of the team’s six total goals in Beijing and also led the team in scoring at I-B with 7 goals and 15 points (tied with Ni Lin (Rachel Llanes)).
Perhaps the biggest difference, though, will be behind the bench. Brian Idalski was the coach at the Olympics, and then Clayton Beddoes took over for I-B. Now China will have a third coach in as many events, as Scott Spencer comes in. Spencer was an assistant at Mercyhurst University before being hired by Kunlun Red Star this past season, a job that naturally partnered with the national team position given that the vast majority of players from Kunlun play for the national team. The 44-year-old Canadian has a monumental task ahead of him, but he has a roster rich in experience.
If you were to try to understand the importance of the U18 program in women’s hockey, look no further than this year’s Slovakian team, which is teeming with talent developed in WW18 and is close to exploding. How close? We will soon find out, but make no mistake, this Slovak team will be in the top pool soon. If not in a week, then in another year, or two. Some 26 players of 31 on the team’s long list are 2000-born and 17 have played in at least one WW18 tournament. Equally important, the team is coached by Arto Sieppi, one of the most respected people in the game. He has been involved in women’s hockey since 1998, primarily in Finland, then later Japan. His breadth of knowledge is exactly what this young team needs.
The oldest player on the team is 27-year-old Janka Hlinkova, and the youngest are 15-year-old Sonia Kubaniova, a goalie, and 16-year-old Ema Tothova. Both played at the 2023 WW18 in Ostersund, Sweden, which was made memorable by Nela Lopusanova, who is currently furthering her development at Bishop Kearney High School in Rochester, New York. Kubaniova played one game while Tothova led the team with six assists in Sweden.
Interestingly, eight players from that tournament will be making their first foray into the senior level while virtually every other player appeared at the 2022 Women’s Worlds I-A when the team finished third. The change is coming, and it’s coming fast. At last year’s WW-I-A, the team had trouble scoring, notching only seven goals in four games. Three players had two goals each—Lucia Istocyova, Nikola Nemcekova, and Tatiana Korenkova—all of whom are expected to play this week. From the WW18 side, Zuzana Dobiasova had five goals in Ostersund, so we’ll see what that translates to eight months later and up at the senior level for the first time.
The Norwegians played at the first four Women’s Worlds (1990, 1992, 1994, 1997) but haven’t been back to the top since. They’re hoping to put an end to this 26-year drought, but they have their work cut out for them. Coach Thomas Pettersen is back for a fourth year, and with a smaller talent pool than many nations to work with, he has brought back 15 players from last year’s Women’s Worlds. The only anomaly is 18-year-old goaltender Martha Kongstorp, who played at the WW18-I-A this past season. The youngest player on the team this year, she played in all five games, but Norway finished last and as a result will play in WW18-I-B next season.
Lotte Pedersen was the star for Norway at last year’s Women’s Worlds I-A, when the team finished a solid second behind France. The 20-year-old Pedersen had three goals of Norway’s total of 13 and is in Shenzen with Norge this year as well. Many of Norway’s best women play in the Swedish league, but one who doesn’t is Emma Bergesen, who scored the golden goal for Mount Royal University in Calgary last year to give the small school its first-ever Canadian university championship. She also led the Norwegians with five assists at the 2022 WW-I-A.
When we speak of youth, we generally mean the players, but in the case of Austria, it’s their coach as well as the skaters. Alexander Broms comes in replacing Jari Risku, and the 32-year-old becomes the youngest coach ever of Austria’s national women’s team. But he comes with experience with Sweden’s WW18 team and inherits a team with 23 of 29 players on the long list born this century. Among the rostered players is surely the most unique goalie tandem consisting of sisters Selma and Magdalena Luggin. The 20-year-old Selma played at last year’s WW-I-A while her 17-year-old sister played in this past season’s WW18-I-A.
In all, Broms’s team consists of players from 2022 WW-I-A and 2023 WW18-I-A, but five of that number played in both events—Lena Artner, Anna Billa, Leonie Kutzer, Laura Leitner, and Hanna Schwarzer. Captain Anna Meixner, the team’s leading scorer last year, is back as well, but the team has an eclectic mix who play all over the hockey map. Many play in the Austrian league, while several play in Sweden and in NCAA. Antonia Matzka had a fine career at both Holy Cross and Vermont, and last year played in the NWHL with the Buffalo Beauts. However, with the uncertainty of when the new pro league will start up, she signed with the Sabres in Vienna for the upcoming season.
On paper, the Dutch are the team that stick out as the underdogs. They finished last in 2022 but there was no demotion, so they are back in I-A with a welcome reprieve. But their WW18 program is two levels below, in II-A, and six players who appeared in that tournament this past season are on the team’s roster for Shenzen, a mighty challenge, to say the least. In 2022, they managed only four goals in as many games, and generating offence this year won’t be any easier. As many as eleven players from 2022 WW-I-A could be in the lineup, making the task of coach Marco Kronenburg particularly challenging. Savine Wielenga, the team’s 34-year-old captain since 2019, is back, while 15-year-old Emily Olsthoorn is not only the youngest player on the team but in the entire tournament.
And then there are the Danes. The only team with recent experience at the top level, they will have 13 players who were in one or both of those 2021 and 2022 WW tournaments. Josefine Jakobsen is back as team captain for a sixth season, and she is one of five players who make the Swedish league their home. The Danes also have plenty of youth, but ten players were born in the 1990s, giving them a veteran presence the other teams are lacking.
And so, as the tournament begins, there is a lot on the line. Two teams will move up, one will go down. A current ranking of the teams might look something like this: 1. DEN, 2. SVK, 3. CHN, 4. NOR, 5. AUT, 6. NED.
But so do five other nations.
Denmark will be joined by hosts China, Austria, Netherlands, Norway, and Slovakia in Shenzen for a six-team, round-robin tournament. Both the winner and second-place finisher will be promoted to the top level of the IIHF Women’s World, Championship for April 2024 in Utica, New York (Hungary and France having been demoted after the 2023 WW top level). Because of their recent successes, Denmark has to be considered one of the favourites, but their path will not be an easy one. And, at the other end, teams have to remember that while promotion may be on the line for some, demotion to I-B for one team could also become reality.
Hosts China present an interesting contrast of expectations. On the one hand, they might be considered the team most likely to be demoted because they are the team that was most recently promoted from I-B, in 2022. As often happens, a team comes up, only to go back down quickly. France, for instance, earned promotion out of I-A of the senior Women’s Worlds in 2022, only to finish last at the 2023 WW and get demoted to I-A for 2024.
However, this Chinese team doesn't present your typical I-B roster. Because China hosted the 2022 Olympics, it received an automatic bye to play, but far from being an unwarranted addition, they surprised fans with their play. Indeed, they won two of their four games and finished ahead of Denmark in the final standings.
Their first-ever Olympic goal was scored by Le Mi (Hannah Miller), who was also part of that I-B team that earned promotion in 2022. And therein lies the duality. The lineup starting this week in Shenzen is awfully close to the Olympic and I-B rosters from 2022, so the team has both some success in their recent memory as well as important amounts of experience gained from the Beijing Olympic Games.
The name that stands above all others is captain and longtime national team member Baiwei Yu. A native of Harbin, the 35-year-old Yu played at three top-level Women’s Worlds in a row (2007-09) as well as two Olympics (2010, 2022). She has been captain for more than a decade and is the senior member of the team, both in age and reputation.
The player they will rely upon the most, however, might well be goalie Tiya Chen (Tiya Chan) who backstopped the team to that crucial 6-2 win over Poland on the final day of the I-B tournament last year, which earned them promotion to I-A this year. Chen also played one game at the Olympics. Up front, Qiqi Lin (Leah Lum) is a returnee from both Olympics and WW-I-B. In fact, she scored two of the team’s six total goals in Beijing and also led the team in scoring at I-B with 7 goals and 15 points (tied with Ni Lin (Rachel Llanes)).
Perhaps the biggest difference, though, will be behind the bench. Brian Idalski was the coach at the Olympics, and then Clayton Beddoes took over for I-B. Now China will have a third coach in as many events, as Scott Spencer comes in. Spencer was an assistant at Mercyhurst University before being hired by Kunlun Red Star this past season, a job that naturally partnered with the national team position given that the vast majority of players from Kunlun play for the national team. The 44-year-old Canadian has a monumental task ahead of him, but he has a roster rich in experience.
If you were to try to understand the importance of the U18 program in women’s hockey, look no further than this year’s Slovakian team, which is teeming with talent developed in WW18 and is close to exploding. How close? We will soon find out, but make no mistake, this Slovak team will be in the top pool soon. If not in a week, then in another year, or two. Some 26 players of 31 on the team’s long list are 2000-born and 17 have played in at least one WW18 tournament. Equally important, the team is coached by Arto Sieppi, one of the most respected people in the game. He has been involved in women’s hockey since 1998, primarily in Finland, then later Japan. His breadth of knowledge is exactly what this young team needs.
The oldest player on the team is 27-year-old Janka Hlinkova, and the youngest are 15-year-old Sonia Kubaniova, a goalie, and 16-year-old Ema Tothova. Both played at the 2023 WW18 in Ostersund, Sweden, which was made memorable by Nela Lopusanova, who is currently furthering her development at Bishop Kearney High School in Rochester, New York. Kubaniova played one game while Tothova led the team with six assists in Sweden.
Interestingly, eight players from that tournament will be making their first foray into the senior level while virtually every other player appeared at the 2022 Women’s Worlds I-A when the team finished third. The change is coming, and it’s coming fast. At last year’s WW-I-A, the team had trouble scoring, notching only seven goals in four games. Three players had two goals each—Lucia Istocyova, Nikola Nemcekova, and Tatiana Korenkova—all of whom are expected to play this week. From the WW18 side, Zuzana Dobiasova had five goals in Ostersund, so we’ll see what that translates to eight months later and up at the senior level for the first time.
The Norwegians played at the first four Women’s Worlds (1990, 1992, 1994, 1997) but haven’t been back to the top since. They’re hoping to put an end to this 26-year drought, but they have their work cut out for them. Coach Thomas Pettersen is back for a fourth year, and with a smaller talent pool than many nations to work with, he has brought back 15 players from last year’s Women’s Worlds. The only anomaly is 18-year-old goaltender Martha Kongstorp, who played at the WW18-I-A this past season. The youngest player on the team this year, she played in all five games, but Norway finished last and as a result will play in WW18-I-B next season.
Lotte Pedersen was the star for Norway at last year’s Women’s Worlds I-A, when the team finished a solid second behind France. The 20-year-old Pedersen had three goals of Norway’s total of 13 and is in Shenzen with Norge this year as well. Many of Norway’s best women play in the Swedish league, but one who doesn’t is Emma Bergesen, who scored the golden goal for Mount Royal University in Calgary last year to give the small school its first-ever Canadian university championship. She also led the Norwegians with five assists at the 2022 WW-I-A.
When we speak of youth, we generally mean the players, but in the case of Austria, it’s their coach as well as the skaters. Alexander Broms comes in replacing Jari Risku, and the 32-year-old becomes the youngest coach ever of Austria’s national women’s team. But he comes with experience with Sweden’s WW18 team and inherits a team with 23 of 29 players on the long list born this century. Among the rostered players is surely the most unique goalie tandem consisting of sisters Selma and Magdalena Luggin. The 20-year-old Selma played at last year’s WW-I-A while her 17-year-old sister played in this past season’s WW18-I-A.
In all, Broms’s team consists of players from 2022 WW-I-A and 2023 WW18-I-A, but five of that number played in both events—Lena Artner, Anna Billa, Leonie Kutzer, Laura Leitner, and Hanna Schwarzer. Captain Anna Meixner, the team’s leading scorer last year, is back as well, but the team has an eclectic mix who play all over the hockey map. Many play in the Austrian league, while several play in Sweden and in NCAA. Antonia Matzka had a fine career at both Holy Cross and Vermont, and last year played in the NWHL with the Buffalo Beauts. However, with the uncertainty of when the new pro league will start up, she signed with the Sabres in Vienna for the upcoming season.
On paper, the Dutch are the team that stick out as the underdogs. They finished last in 2022 but there was no demotion, so they are back in I-A with a welcome reprieve. But their WW18 program is two levels below, in II-A, and six players who appeared in that tournament this past season are on the team’s roster for Shenzen, a mighty challenge, to say the least. In 2022, they managed only four goals in as many games, and generating offence this year won’t be any easier. As many as eleven players from 2022 WW-I-A could be in the lineup, making the task of coach Marco Kronenburg particularly challenging. Savine Wielenga, the team’s 34-year-old captain since 2019, is back, while 15-year-old Emily Olsthoorn is not only the youngest player on the team but in the entire tournament.
And then there are the Danes. The only team with recent experience at the top level, they will have 13 players who were in one or both of those 2021 and 2022 WW tournaments. Josefine Jakobsen is back as team captain for a sixth season, and she is one of five players who make the Swedish league their home. The Danes also have plenty of youth, but ten players were born in the 1990s, giving them a veteran presence the other teams are lacking.
And so, as the tournament begins, there is a lot on the line. Two teams will move up, one will go down. A current ranking of the teams might look something like this: 1. DEN, 2. SVK, 3. CHN, 4. NOR, 5. AUT, 6. NED.