2024 IIHF ICE HOCKEY U18 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP Division II

[Albatros]

Israel with another violent meltdown in the final minutes and Taiwan up for another year!

 

[SoundAndFury]

Israel getting relegated definitely seems deserved to me.

 

[Albatros]

I don't really even understand what their whole problem with anger management was, especially Kazinets. It's one thing to take an unnecessary game misconduct penalty when you're down by eight like the game before, but today they were only trailing by one with over five minutes to go when he decides to throw it all away and go headhunting. And that against what has to be one of the cleanest teams in all of hockey.

 

[SoundAndFury]

So China in the D2A for the first time ever.

 

[FourQuarters]

Congrats boys!

 

[Albatros]

China dominated mostly through puck pressure and gap control, a difficult team to play against at this level but still not very impressed in how Spain found no answers to that at home.

 

[ozo]

So China in the D2A for the first time ever.

Hopefully it means something or it a sign of some positive trend as unlikely as it sounds. At the moment China has 0 professional hockey players (it is ridiculous lol) and 2A for me is a "mental border" level where I start to expect absolute best kids to make it as some level pro players down the road.

 

[Albatros]

Without a hockey league they're not going to develop any pro-level players domestically. Despite being listed as domestic players in the tournament documents, multiple kids from this team actually play abroad at respectable junior leagues where pro careers are plausible (the overseas Chinese kids have never actually played in China regardless of what their federation claims). None of them necessarily has that pro trajectory but at least they have space for improvement in an environment where that is not impossible.

 

[FrHockeyFan]

D2A kicks off on Wednesday.

All games will be available on the Polish NA YouTube channel.

https://youtube.com/@PolskiHokej/streams

 

[ozo]

GB allows two goals on first three Polish shots and to me it looks like winner of this tournament is decided on day one.

 

[HungryFrank]

Today is the relegation day: my guess is Croatia is the one that gets relegated

 

[SoundAndFury]

I would be slightly surprised as the Croats consistently performed better against the same opponents (GB and the Netherlands). But yeah, overall, it seems like both teams are tire fire and the Croat golden generation ends with '05s.

Other than a few Croat 2009s and C-grade GB kids, a pretty bland tournament overall in terms of prospects.

 

[carjackmalone]

What was the score for the Croatia Serbia game

 

[SoundAndFury]

What was the score for the Croatia Serbia game

Croats won 4-1.