2024 U18 World Championship Preview

The 2023 U18 World Championship’s were an absolute blast and chockfull of memorable moments. Nela Lopušanová burst into the spotlight like few we’ve ever seen before. Caitlin Kraemer beat Marie-Philip Poulin’s single-tournament goal record. Felicia Frank and Sweden forced the USA to miss the Gold Medal Game for the very first time. Finland took Canada to overtime in the semi-final. Czechia came one controversial non-goalie interference call away from making it to the semi-final.

The best part is so many of the players that made last tournament great are coming back to the 2024 edition and are bringing a lot of talent with them to make this tournament even better. The storylines this tournament are the best we’ve see at this level with two potential generational players in Nela Lopušanová and Chloe Primerano, Canada going for the three-peat, Sweden looking to build upon last year’s success, Czechia looking to make the same jump at the U18’s they have already done at the senior tournament, and Slovakia being a huge wild card in what they’ll do this tournament.

Before digging into the storylines of the tournament we need to do some housekeeping first.

• The 2024 U18 WJC tournament will be taking place in Zug, Switzerland. This holds special significance as this is also the first year that Zug has seen significant women’s hockey in a decade and a half.
• Zug has it’s first women’s pro team featuring Swiss star Lara Stalder in addition to the U18 World Junior Championships (U18 WJC).  
• The tournament starts January 6^th, 2024 and ends January 14^th, 2024.
• Pool A features Canada, Finland, Czechia, Germany.
• Pool B featurs USA, Sweden, Slovakia, Switzerland
• In Canada, all Canada, USA, Slovakia games plus all playoff games will be shown on TSN.
• In the US, NHL Network has the three US group games on the schedule.
• Nicole Haase (The Victory Press, USCHO, The PodKaz) will be on-site for the tournament and doing a daily journal for The Victory Press