Except hockey is in a weird situation in that country. The dictator loves the sport, and encourages its growth with rinks being built etc....however, once he is no longer in power, who knows how that will change...
With teams at the 2nd tier and in an age restricted event, no team will be competitive on an annual basis. As I mentioned in a post above, this is perhaps the best crop of Junior players from that country ever. However, the current IIHF format has 2 teams swapping yearly between the Elite/Div I, Div I/II, and Div II/III. Given this format, Germany and Belarus have been yo-yoing between the elite and Div I for the past few years.
The arguments for expanding the elite division to 12 teams (no more) boil down to these:
- The gap between the original 6 elite teams (going back to the U20s of the 70s) - Canada, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Czech Republic and USA - and the next - Switzerland, Slovakia, Germany, Belarus, Latvia, Denmark, Norway and Kazakhstan* - has closed a bit in the past 10-15 years. This, by itself warrants an expansion.
- The present system is really messed up. It is creating the well known yo-yo effect where some teams, Germany and Belarus in particular, (well, well known to those who follow international hockey) bounce up and down between the elite division and division I. Decreasing the number of elite teams to 8 is no solution. This will only cause other teams - Slovakia and Switzerland - to bounce up and down.
- An expansion to 12 teams will probably help the 'next' teams to close the gap even further. You always gain experience by playing against stronger teams. It may also help to promote youth development as well as the game in general in the 'next' countries. Further, it will geographically widen the elite nations' scouting of talents.
If the Senior level can have 16 at the elite level, the U20 can accomodate 12.
Denmark and Kazakhstan should not be virtually guaranteed to be relegated after only 1 year. And if one of them do pull off an upset and cause an regular elite nation to relegate to Div I, then that nation will simply make mince-meat of that Div I group the following year, denying the other Div I teams in that group a chance at promotion. This would be IMO worse than having a 12 team elite group were we would see the odd-blowout.
Yes, you will see some blow-outs in the first couple of years, but that is how the sport grows, it worked with basketball, and even hockey's senior World Championships 2nd tier are closer than when it orginally expanded to 16 teams.
*with SUI and SVK at the head of this class, but it is closer than you think. At the U20 tournament in Germany last month, here were the results:
Slovakia - Norway 2-3ot (2-1,0-0,0-1,0-1)
Germany - Switzerland 2-1 (0-1,1-0,1-0)
Switzerland - Slovakia 3:2 (1:1,0:1,2:0)
Germany – Norway 4-0 (1-0,0-0,3-0)
Norway - Switzerland 3:4 (0:1,2:2,1:1)
Slovakia - Germany 2:5 (2:1, 0:4, 0:0)