Four New Jersey Devils and one prospective Devil will represent the countries of Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland in the 2025 IIHF Men’s World Championships. This is an open post for all to discuss all 16 nations in this year’s tourney.
With the New Jersey Devils knocked out of the 2025 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs in the first round, their players could have been made available for the annual international ice hockey tourney: the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championships. Specifically, the main World Championships as all of the lower divisions have started and finished their games. And, more specifically, the Devils possibly involved have been healthy enough to play hockey could represent their nation presuming they were invited.
As of May 6, five Devils players will head to either Sweden or Denmark to begin playing games on May 9. This year’s tourney should be extra exciting. The 2026 Winter Olympics are less than a year away, national teams are using this year’s tourney to help prepare for it, and the star power has definitely been raised with Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon all joining Team Canada. With the tournament starting today, this post will be where you can comment on all things related to the IIHF 2025 World Championships.
The Tournament: The IIHF 2025 Men’s World Championships
The Places: The Avicii Arena in Stockholm, Sweden and the Jyske Bank Boxen in Herning, Denmark
The Dates: May 9 through May 20 for the Group Stage; May 22 through May 25 for the Medal Tournament.
The Format: 16 national teams are split up into two groups of eight for the Group Stage. Group A will play in Stockholm, Sweden. Group B will play in Herning, Denmark. Each team will play each other once. Regulation wins are worth 3 points, overtime/shootout wins are worth 2, overtime/shootout losses are worth 1, and regulation losses are worth 0 points. Head-to-head results are the first tiebreaker after points in the standings.
The top four teams in each group will move on to the Medal Tournament. Fifth through seventh place will qualify for next year’s World Championship. Last place in each group will be relegated to Division I, Group A for 2026. They will be replaced by Great Britain and future Olympic hosts Italy, who each earned promotion from the 2025 Division I, Group A games.
The Medal Tournament is a single-elimination series of games. Seeding is organized by group finish: first in Group A plays fourth in Group B; second in Group A plays third in Group B; and so forth. Re-seeding is done after the quarter finals. Winners in the semifinals play for the Gold on May 25. Losers play for Bronze on May 25. The semifinals and finals will be played in Stockholm; the two sites will split the quarterfinal matchups.
The Slogan: “Feel the Pulse.” Really?
The Groups & The Devils Involved: In Group A, which will be played in Stockholm, Sweden: Canada, Finland, Sweden, Slovakia, Latvia, Austria, France, and Slovenia.
Jacob Markström will play for Sweden. He had a mostly good first round performance after struggling after his injury in the 2024-25 season. Expect Markstrom to be the top goalie for Sweden as the other goalies representing the three crowns are Sam Ersson and Arvid Söderblom.
One recently signed Devils prospect will play for Finland: Lenni Hämeenaho. He has been, well, an ace for Ässät in 2024-25. In 2024-25, he led the team in goals with 20 and finished second on the squad in points with 51. He got off to a fast start with 8 of those 20 goals in his first 11 games, but he did keep producing throughout the season. Hämeenaho has earned his first taste with the main national team and he could be one to watch in the tourney. If only to get a sense of what he could do ahead of training camp in the Fall.
In Group B, which will be played in Herning, Denmark: Czechia, Switzerland, United States, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Kazakhstan, and Hungary.
Three Devils are playing for Switzerland and it will not surprise you that they are Nico Hischier, Jonas Siegenthaler, and Timo Meier. All three have represented the Swiss national team before. All three showed up and showed out in the Carolina series. Siegenthaler’s inclusion is most surprising given how he just came back from injury to play at all against the Canes. But he did his job well enough while Hischier was a star and Meier kept at it until the pucks finally went in for them. All three should factor in a major way for Switzerland as the roster is heavy on National League players as opposed to National Hockey League players. Switzerland should also push hard in this year’s tournament between winning Silver last year and hosting the WCs in 2026.
The Schedule: From the IIHF website, here it is.
The Broadcast: For Americans, the NHL Network will carry some games. For Canada, TSN typically does too. For everyone else, try IIHF.TV for a legal (and not free) streaming option.
The Favorites: Canada having Crosby and MacKinnon combined with a forward group loaded with players such as Travis Konecny, Bo Horvat, Barrett Hayton, Adam Fantilli, Macklin Celebrini, and Kent Johnson is sick. An addition of Jordan Binnington to the goaltending group makes an already strong roster even stronger. Call them favorites on paper.
Sweden, as hosts, will be contenders. That as well as having Markstrom, Filip Forsberg, Jonas Brodin, Lucas Raymond, Leo Carlsson, and Rasmus Andersson leading the charge.
Over in Group B, a repeat Gold medal for Czechia will be tough but so will be any team trying to stop David Pastrnak or beat Karel Vejmelka. Those two will do a lot of heavy lifting but they can carry a lot of weight.
The United States continues to show off the power of their USNTDP output as the roster is filled with players who came through that program. It is also a very young roster with only five players over the age of 28 with plenty of prime minutes available for Clayton Keller, Tage Thompson, Zach Werenski, and Matty Beniers. Look out for Jeremy Swayman wanting to redeem some of his 2024-25 campaign and Issac Howard’s performance as Howard has indicated he is not signing with Tampa Bay. Also, look for what, if anything, Cole Hutson, Hampton Slukynsky, and Zeev Buium do as under-20 players.
The tournament always has room for surprises. One upset in the group stage can make a big difference. And the Medal Tournament are all win-or-go-home games. The on-paper favorites may end up missing the medal games entirely. Such is the fun (and tension) of this tourney.
The Rules: As always: Please keep your language clean (no language masking, abbreviating, etc. I mean it: no swearing), respect your fellow Devils fan with no personal attacks (play nice or you will not play here), no illegal streams (this means no asking, no hints, no nothing about it), and please keep your comments relevant to the IIHF World Championships. If you want to talk about the Stanley Cup Playoffs, then go here instead. Thank you for your adherence. Go WCs!