(Dennis Pajot/Getty Images)
Hosts USA are among the favourites to retain their ice hockey world title when the 2024 IIHF Women’s World Championship begins in Utica, New York state, on 3 April.
The Americans stunned last year’s hosts Canada in the 2023 final 6–3 to win their first title since 2019. Now they are going for back-to-back wins to restore their dominance.
In 22 editions of the tournament, only three countries have ever made it to the gold-medal game: Canada, with 12 world titles, the USA, with 10, and Finland, with one silver-medal finish.
It seems likely, therefore, that the title of world champion will be disputed between those teams again. With the inaugural season of the North American Professional Women’s Hockey League also providing excitement this winter, interest in women’s ice hockey has never been greater.
Additionally, stars from outside the favourite teams have also shone during the PWHL season, adding intrigue to the fight for bronze.
The 10 teams are split into two groups, with the top five ranked teams in Group A and the remaining five in Group B. After each team has played the other four in their group, all five teams from Group A and the top three teams from Group B qualify for the quarter-finals.
Canada, Czechia, Finland, Switzerland, and USA are in Group A, with People’s Republic of China, Denmark, Germany, Japan, and Sweden in Group B.
The quarter-finals will be played according to seeding, with the first-placed team in Group A facing the third-placed team from Group B, and so forth, with the teams ranked fourth and fifth in Group A playing each other again.
Teams will be reseeded for the semi-finals based on their group stage performances, while quarter-final losers will enter a placement bracket, with the winner of the fifth/sixth place playoff qualifying for Group A in the 2025 World Championship.
If the scores are tied at the end of regulation time (three periods of 20 minutes), a sudden-death first-goal-wins overtime period will be played. This period will last for five minutes in the group stage, with teams playing at three-on-three strength, before a best-of-five penalty-shot shootout.
The 3-2-1-0 points system will be in use, with three points for a win in regulation, two points for an overtime or penalty-shot shootout win, one point for losing in overtime or shootout, and no points for losing in regulation. If teams are tied on points, their head-to-head records will be the tiebreaker.
The length of the overtime period in the quarter-finals, semi-finals, and bronze-medal game is 10 minutes, before a shootout. In the gold-medal game, the overtime period will be 20 minutes long, with no shootout – multiple overtime periods will be played until a goal is scored.
All times are U.S. Eastern Daylight Savings Time (UTC -4 hours).
With every game being played at the Adirondack Bank Center, there are just three games scheduled every day, at 11:00am, 3:00pm, and 7:00pm EDT during the round-robin Preliminary Round. All games are listed in order of start time.
The whole event will be televised, with games available to watch live via broadcasting partners in specific territories.
In the United States, games will be on NHL Network, while in Canada they will be on TSN in English and RDS in French.
Full information on how to watch in your region is on the IIHF official website.