Ice Hockey 2021 - 2022 Discussion Thread

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On 5/8/2022 at 9:41 PM, hckošice said:

Freshly promoted and Bids for the 2023 World Championship

 

 

Hungary won the brotherly cross-border clash with Romania 4-2 on the last day at the 2022 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship Division I Group A.

The result didn’t change much in the standings as it became already clear yesterday evening that Hungary would finish in second place while Romania would remain in last place and be relegated.

Media representatives at the Tivoli Hall were therefore more interested in what the ice hockey associations of Hungary and Slovenia announced after the game. Hungary and Slovenia, both promoted to the top division as the top-two ranked teams here, announced a joint bid for the 2023 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship that was originally planned in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The bid was presented under the motto “extreme circumstances require extreme decisions”. Since the countries have a tough time to bid for the tournament years in advance as “elevator teams” that move up and down between the top level and the Division I, they want to seize the chance with the 2023 edition to be reassigned just one year in advance and both teams being qualified. The bid includes the original game days of 5-21 May 2023.

The two countries bid with the brand-new MVM Dome in Budapest as the venue for one preliminary-round group, two quarter-finals, both semi-finals and both medal games. The arena was opened last December and hosted the 2022 EHF European Men’s Handball Championship with a capacity of 19,182 spectators in an ice hockey configuration.

Slovenia’s venue would be Arena Stozice, which hosted the 2012 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship Division I Group A with up to 10,500 fans filling the venue at that time. It would host the other preliminary-round group and two quarter-final games.

Hungary has never hosted a top-level men’s World Ice Hockey Championship but Budapest staged the top-level U18 Women’s Worlds in 2014. Slovenia’s capital of Ljubljana was host of the 1966 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship. The event took place with three tournaments in former Yugoslavia with Ljubljana hosting the top division, Zagreb the B-Pool and Jesenice the C-Pool.

The bid failed. The Hungarian government decided to not support the hosting of the event due to the war and the economic crisis.  

 

Orbán has been very supportive of sport events in Hungary, so this is the first time in the last 12 years that he stopped a bid. Probably a sign of how deeply the Hungarian economy is fucked.