So the first sim of the Group Stage for IIHF just happened, but I want to break down the groups and dive into the teams in this years IIHF tourney. To start. We have to look at the IIHF standings which take in to account the last 4 seasons of IIHF tournaments. There's a formula for how points are awarded, but it basically boils down to getting to the Medal rounds = a lot of points, not getting out of the group stage = not a lot of points. And as the hands of time move on, the most recent seasons count more to your score. There standings are used to make even groups for the current seasons tournament. Group A gets 1st, 4th, 5th, 8th, 9th, 12th 13th. And Group B gets 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 7th, 10th, 11th, 14th. I can understand why the groups are this way. But as I show below you have the potential to get weird groups where most of the leagues TPE is in one group. Or there is a large gap in TPE. Below is the standings and past performances for each team.

1st place - Ireland - S75 Gold, S76 Gold, S77 Gold
2nd place - Canada - S76 Bronze
3rd place - Japan - S76 Silver, S77 Silver
4th place - Switzerland - S73 Silver
5th place - Finland - S73 Gold, S77 Bronze
6th place - United States -
7th place - France - S75 Silver
8th place - Germany - S74 Gold,
9th place - Sweden - S73 Bronze, S75 Bronze
10th place - Latvia -
11th place - Great Britain - S73 Silver
12th place - Quebec -
13th place - Norway - S74 Bronze
14th place - Czechia -

So as you can see. The three-peat for Ireland has surged them to the top of the rankings. Effectively, they are the country to beat. However, you notice Canada is 2nd despite only one Bronze medal and that is because they always made at least out of the group stage in each season. Whereas Czechia has not made it out of the group stage at all in the last 4 tournaments. So using the ranking above and the rules from the IIHF, we get the two groups.

Group A
1st place - Ireland
4th place - Switzerland
5th place - Finland
8th place - Germany
9th place - Sweden
12th place - Quebec
13th place - Norway

Group B
2nd place - Canada
3rd place - Japan
6th place - United States
7th place - France
10th place - Latvia
11th place - Great Britain
14th place - Czechia

Now I have no idea how accurate this is because capped SMJHL players are allowed to "uncap" there builds for the IIHF tournament if they are called up. I also know that these build are pulled from updates during the playoffs I think so these builds are usually behind from what the portal shows instead. It may be the honest truth that some Fed can't forms a 20 man roster and have to dig deep into player pools to find actives. Maybe some Fed Heads want to let the young players be excited so they call them up early if there's space. Either way, some teams have players who are very much so at a SMJHL level. While other teams are very good top to bottom. I also understand that the start of the IIHF tournament is chaotic and usually the first 1-2 sims are the "oops my lines aren't right" sims and stuff evens out as the tournament goes on. Below I showed how each Group looks with regards to TPE. Note: i just realized writing this, that these averages do not include the goalie TPE cause of the way the index splits off goalies, I missed it.



You can see that the average TPE does not mean much when it comes to IIHF ranking, which is turn decides how groups are formed. It should come as no surprise that Canada and USA are the top two nations in TPE. These two nations have the most amount of user in them. I was surprised to see how close France is to Canada in average TPE. Then in Group A you have nations that are middle of the pack in TPE, but ranked in the top 5 with Switzerland and Finland. Then there is Japan, who must have recently lost a few players because while they are ranked 3rd right now but are 12th in TPE, having recently won Silver the last tournament.

But that's the beauty of the IIHF (and why I think its important to this league) is that due to the short and quick nature of the tournament, almost anything can happen. These teams play 2 games against each other in the group stage and then only play a best of 1 in the knockouts where something like a good goalie or strong defense or meta-defining chemistry on a line can carry you to a Gold Medal. I also think that Fed Head experience comes into play. I was co-Fed Head at GB for a short time and my record was abysmal cause to be honest, I had no idea about anything in tactics. Especially at things like individual sliders or line matching and I think that's where experienced Fed Heads can really beat out inexperienced ones. I've also only GM'd in the SMJHL where at most you have 100-200tpe difference between teams on average so what does it look like when 1659 tpe USA plays 1128 Czechia in the opening games?



Star goalie, Justin Time lets 3 goals in within 8 minutes and get pulled and Czechia wins 5-2. But this is the crazy stuff that happens when you have 12 games to prove yourself and only play each country twice. For example. Ireland has had a bizarre start. Sweden and them are only 60 or so TPE apart, but Ireland won the first game 5-3, a result we would expect, but then the very next game (not a back-to-back though). Sweden trounces Ireland 6-0 and with one bad result Ireland is now the bottom of Group A when they are top in TPE in that group.

I don't think I was trying to prove anything here. If anything, just that the IIHF is super chaotic and lovely and is good for the league. I might do a follow up piece on this around the medal round just to talk about **if** the top teams in TPE made it or if they are frauds. But it is interesting seeing the difference in TPE between some countries, Especially those who have almost a full line of SMJHL players so like so far this tournament with Czechia starting 3-0 despite being last in IIHF ranking. Maybe they can make their first group stage in a long while?