By Joe Azar

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International competitions in sports are the best. Sure, you have every right to your opinion on the matter, but if you tell me club competitions are better, you’d be wrong. The pride and excitement that comes with cheering on an entire nation you live in as they take on another country gets people fired up unlike anything else. Just look at the World Cup and the Olympics, people here were drowning themselves in red, white and blue to support the United States and the cool thing is, almost every sport has an international competition, it’s just not given a chance in the spotlight. Outside of hockey fans, not many know that the World Cup of Hockey begins Saturday. The entire event, which lasts about two weeks, will also be broadcasted on ESPN networks and feature the best hockey players in the world. Outside of avid hockey fans not many know how the competition works and which teams are in it. Not to worry though, I’ve got you covered:

  1. The competition begins with a group stage: There are eight teams participating in the World Cup of Hockey split up into four groups. Each nation plays the other three teams in the group once, with the top two teams of the group advancing. The winner of Group A faces the runner-up of Group B in one semi-final and the winner of Group B faces the Group A runner-up in the other semi-final. In the final, the winner of the two semi-finals face off against each other in a best-of-three series.
  2. There’s a team North America and Team Europe. No, seriously: If you are going to have a World Cup of Hockey, obviously nations who practically live on ice like Canada, Sweden and Russia are going to participate. U.S. will be represented as well, so what is the reason for team North America or team Europe? Honestly, that’s a good question, I have no idea why they would have a team representing the entire continent when they have teams already representing it. Maybe it’s due to the lack of teams participating, but if I say that, I make hockey fans angry. I guess it makes sense for Europe as there are countries that have good players that don’t have a country to play for, but North America doesn’t make any sense. It’ll be cool to see some of the best players under 23 years old taking the ice together like Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel, but couldn’t they find at least one other country to actually be represented?
  3. There’s a clear favorite to win it all: And you’ll never guess who it is…..it’s Canada, of course it’s Canada. People in Canada are likely born with a hockey stick in their hand, and their roster is stacked with some of the best talent on ice, including Sidney Crosby. Canada is also the defending Olympic Gold-medalists from the Sochi Olympic Games in 2014. If there was a team that could dethrone the Canadiens, it’s likely to be Sweden or Russia, but you can never count the U.S. out. They do have the roster to match some of these heavyweights and if they can find chemistry on the ice quickly, they might win the whole thing too.