IIHF U18 Men's World Championship Returns to the United States
Hockey Canada Photo
By Scott Lowe - MYHockeyRankings.com
For the fourth time since 1999, the International Ice Hockey Federation Men’s U18 World Championship returns to the United States. Texas hosted the event in 2021, the last time it was on U.S. soil, and that’s also where the 2025 tournament will be played.
That year, Texas cities Frisco and Plano teamed up to host the U18 World Championship; Frisco will be part of the festivities again this year, serving as a host city along with Allen as 10 countries from around the globe send their best teenage hockey players to compete for a gold medal.
The tournament got underway Wednesday, April 23, with Slovakia beating Finland, 1-0, in a shootout at the Credit Union of Texas Center in Allen, while Sweden steamrolled Switzerland, 10-3, at Comerica Center in Frisco. The third game of opening day pitted Norway vs. Latvia in Allen, with Team USA waiting in the wings to take on Czechia at 8 p.m. EDT in Frisco.
Canada’s opener is against Slovakia in Allen at 5 p.m. EDT on Day 2 of the tournament, April 24. While the Canadians and Americans routinely compete for medals at the U18 World Championship, the two nations don’t meet for the gold medal as frequently as they do in other international tournaments. In fact, Canada never has captured back-to-back U18 gold medals, and Sweden has won two of the last five championships.
The United States has earned gold once during that same span, in 2023, while Canada skated to the title in 2024 and 2021. Prior to that, Sweden claimed gold in 2016 and 2018, with the Americans winning in 2014, 2015 and 2017. The U.S. has captured four of the last 10 gold medals, with Sweden, Canada and Finland earning two apiece. Interestingly, the only year the Americans didn’t medal during that span was the last time the event was held in the United States.
Meanwhile, Sweden has earned seven medals in the past 10 championships, with Canada and Sweden medaling five times apiece.
This week, the Telus Cup, the Canadian U18 club national championship tournament, is being held in British Columbia, while the Canadian Hockey League major junior playoffs are well underway. That makes it nearly impossible for the Canadians to send their absolute best team the tournament, and from year to year the team’s head coach basically is starting from scratch.
The 2025 edition of Team Canada includes just one player who participated in last year’s U18 World Championship, goaltender Jack Ivankovic, and he was third in line to protect the cage as Canada earned gold a year ago in Finland. In fact, the latest Canadian roster posted to the IIHF website only has 17 players listed, with each of them coming from CHL teams that have been eliminated from either the Western Hockey League, Ontario Hockey League or Quebec Maritime Hockey League playoffs.
Seven of the listed players recently concluded their OHL campaigns, with seven more coming from the WHL and three having played in the QMJHL. WHL-sensation and future NHL-star Gavin McKenna is eligible to play but is busy pursuing the WHL championship and a berth in the Memorial Cup. Several Canadian players who played in the Hlinka-Gretzky Cup last summer are competing in the U18 World Championship.
As usual, Sweden has brought its share of top NHL prospects to Texas, while Czechia and Slovakia seem to be on the rise again in international hockey and will have rosters full of plyers with high-level international experience and legitimate professional hockey aspirations.
More than 30 NHL Draft prospects are expected to compete in Texas.
Building Team USA
The United States builds its roster around mostly players in its National Team Development program. This year’s World Championship 25-man Team USA roster includes 17 players who played together for the U18 NTDP team in the USHL, two members of the U17 NTDP team, three United States Hockey League junior players, two players from NCAA Division I programs and one player from the WHL.
At MYHockey Rankings, we tend to get a lot of questions about our rankings as district, regional and national championship play winds down. As with any sport, upsets happen during tournament competition, and teams that end up at the top of the rankings don’t always win championships. People often question why teams that win national championships don’t always end up ranked No. 1 at the end of the year.
The answer is simple; our rankings are solely based on mathematics and an algorithm that takes into consideration the results of thousands of games played during a given season. A few big wins during a week of tournament play aren’t likely to have a dramatic impact on math-based rankings factoring in the complete body of work for teams that often play between 60 and 80 games.
This is not unusual when it comes to math-based sports rankings. In college basketball for instance, most people consider the KenPom rankings to the be most representative of any analytical models that rank NCAA Division I men’s basketball teams. Despite Florida’s impressive recent run to the national championship, Duke and Houston concluded the year ranked first and second, respectively, by that model.
Upsets and unexpected champions are why we play the games and are a big part of why sports are so captivating and exhilarating.
An interesting way to check the validity of our rankings is to cross-reference the United States Boys Midget (15U through 18U) Association Rankings with the players on the Team USA U18 World Championship roster.
A quick look at both indicates that that the players on the 2025 roster played for the clubs or leagues before funneling into the National Team Development Program:
Shattuck-St. Mary’s 15/16U - 2
Little Caesars 15/16U - 3
Minnesota High School - 3
New England Prep - 3
Bishop Kearney Selects 15U - 2
Chicago Mission 15U - 2
Dallas Stars Elite 16U - 2
Long Island Gulls 16U - 1
NorthStar Christian Academy 16U - 1
Team Wisconsin 15U - 1
Los Angeles Jr. Kings 16U - 1
Pittsburgh Penguins Elite 16U - 1
Windy City Storm 15U - 1
Buffalo Jr. Sabres 16U - 1
Toronto Marlboros – 1
All but four players on this year’s Team USA U18 roster played for clubs ranked among our top 20 associations the past two years, Minnesota high school teams or New England prep-school teams. Fifteen played for top 20 clubs, with six playing for school teams in Minnesota or New England. One of the four who didn’t come from one of those sources played for the Toronto Marlboros, the second-ranked youth organization in Ontario.
Here are some additional interesting tidbits about the Team USA roster:
- 23 of the 25 players already have committed to NCAA Division I programs, with four committing to Michigan and three each to Arizona State, Minnesota and Boston College
- 12 states are represented on the roster, with six players coming from Minnesota, four from New York and three from Massachusetts.
- Michigan, Illinois, North Dakota and Pennsylvania each have two natives on the roster.
- Colorado, Texas, Wisconsin, Maryland and California each have one representative on the team.
- There are 23 players born in 2007 on the roster and two born in 2008.
U18 World Championship Format
The 10 competing teams are divided into two groups:
Group A – Canada, Finland, Slovakia, Latvia, Norway
Group B – USA, Sweden, Czechia, Switzerland, Germany
Teams play every other team in their pool in the preliminary round to determine seedings for the quarterfinals. Round-robin play runs from April 23 through April 28, culminating that day at 8 p.m. EDT when the United States faces Germany.
The top four finishers in each group cross over for the quarterfinal round, with those games being played April 30. Quarterfinal winners advance to the May 2 semifinals, with the gold- and bronze-medal games slated for May 3. Remaining teams are re-seeded for the semifinals based on their performance in the preliminary round.
All Team USA games, as well as other selected contests, can be viewed live on NHL Network, while the various TSN platforms will offer all of the games in Canada.
CLICK HERE for the IIHF U18 World Championship home page
CLICK HERE for the IIHF U18 World Championship complete schedule
CLICK HERE for the IIHF U18 World Championship standings
CLICK HERE for the IIHF U18 World Championship rosters
CLICK HERE for the IIHF U18 World Championship team rosters
