2024 WM: Group B Preview

There are the favourites and the hopefuls, but in the end Group B plays by the same rules as Group A—a round robin preliminary round after which the top four teams advance to the playoff quarter-finals, the next three teams are finished and ranked, and the bottom team demoted to Division I-A for 2025. Herewith a brief primer on what to expect from the 28 preliminary-round games in Otsrava.

France

The French have been in the top pool every year since 2008 but have qualified for the playoffs only once, in 2014. Scoring goals has usually been their Achilles heel, including last year when they managed only ten goals in seven games. Coach Philippe Bozon is back, as are many of the names familiar to fans of the French team—Stephane da Costa, Sacha Treille, Pierre-Eduard Bellemare, and Charles Bertrand. But Bozon also has some newer faces in the lineup in the hopes of shaking things up a bit, notably Enzo Cantagallo and Lucien Onno, who is back for a second WM after making his Team France debut last year at age 24.

Germany

The Germans couldn’t have been happier than last year when they made it to the gold-medal game for the first time since the playoff format was introduced and won silver for the first time since 1953. Of course, coach Harold Kreis is back after his stunningly successful debut last year. He’ll have JJ Peterka up front, alongside Nico Storm and Leonhard Pfoderl. Moritz Muller will anchor the blue line corps and in goal they are rock solid with Philip Grubauer and Mathias Niederberger. This is a solid team, to be sure, but a repeat trip to the finals might be asking too much.

Kazakhstan

Playing up for the fourth year running, Kazakhstan will no doubt key in on games with Poland and France as a means of staying in the top pool another year. The last place team in each group gets demoted, and the Kazakhs would dearly love to continue to gain some valuable experience at the top in 2025. But it will be a tough road. They don’t have a deep pool from which to draw new talent regularly, and most all of their players come from one league, the KHL. Nevertheless, coach Galym Mambetaliev had his team in 11th place last year, so there is some confidence there coming into Ostrava.

Latvia

Will they, or won’t they? Can they, or can’t they repeat what they did in historic fashion last year? Latvia won a bronze medal, their first ever in WM play, and have…