What A 2028 World Cup Of Hockey Should Really Look Like

The National Hockey League and their players’ association recently announced their plans to host a four nations tournament, called the 4 Nations Face-off, in February of 2025. Canada, Finland, Sweden, and the United States will take part in the event. While it is not a World Cup of Hockey like many fans were wishing for, it will still bring four of hockey’s premier national teams back to best-on-best competition.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman called this four nations tournament a “bit of an appetizer“, for the 2026 and 2030 Olympics — which the league has also agreed to partake in — along with the hopeful return of a World Cup in 2028.

This news has hockey fans not only excited, but curious, as to how this international calendar will playout. The biggest question mark? The World Cup.

Number of Teams

The FIFA World Cup is expanding to 48 teams, the FIBA World Cup contains 32 teams, and the World Baseball Classic seen 20 participants in 2023, but the truth is, hockey is just not ready to have a World Cup of that magnitude. This is not saying a 30-team World Cup of Hockey would not be fantastic for the sport, because it certainly would bring positive attention from across the globe, but the gap of talent between the best and the rest is still too significant.

Currently, the IIHF Men’s World Championship has 16 teams and the men’s Olympic ice hockey tournament incorporates 12. The last World Cup in 2016 contained 6 national teams and 8 total participants, while the other two editions in 1996 and 2004 also had just 8 teams. By the year 2028, that number will simply be too low — the Olympics has seemingly nailed it with 12 nations.

Why are 12 teams an ideal amount for the 2028 World Cup of Hockey?

• It would align with their being a 12-team best-on-best competition every two seasons.
• Men’s ice hockey has seen 10 different countries medal at major tournaments since 2018, developing what could be called a “Big 10”. Having 12 teams makes it likely that those 10 qualify and opens the door for 2 more hopeful nations to compete.
• There would be a healthy balance between limiting upsets and still allowing underdogs to compete against the world’s best.

Format

The Olympics actively use a format that includes three groups of four teams and has the top four of those bunch receive a bye to the quarterfinals. While there have not been many public complaints about this format, it could get repetitive and is confusing in some respects.

A simple configuration would be having two groups of six teams, similarly to the World Championship. Each group can be hosted in different cities (or even countries) and the preliminary round could be completed in just seven days. Following the group stage, the top four teams ideally advance to a quarterfinal. Then a semifinal and medal games would complete the bracket. This particular format is actually identical to what was used at the 2006 Olympics.

The projection of the event being played in a short timeframe also aligns with the World Cup taking place mid-season — an idea the NHL appears to be more open to.

Qualification

The final step in the creation of a proper World Cup is determining who will partake in the event. The previous three World Cups seen the organizers blindly choose what they assumed to be the top countries — with 2016 reaching extreme levels of incompetence as they added a pair of gimmick teams. Prior to the creation of the World Cup of Hockey, the Canada Cup was the sport’s premier international competition and that also used the same selection process. There was only one exception: West Germany replaced Finland in the 1984 tournament thanks to their fifth-place finish at the 1983 IIHF World Championship… while ninth placed USA still qualified.

Evidently, the NHL cannot be relied on to construct an effective qualification format for any future competitions. The next World Cup in 2028 is also unlikely to include a qualifying tournament. Logistically speaking, aligning a full-scale qualification tournament into hockey’s worldwide schedule would be a tough task.

The solution? Take the top 12 teams in the IIHF world rankings following the most recent World Championship (in this case 2027) and have those nations automatically qualify for the World Cup. Not only is this an efficient method, but it maintains a relevancy within the Men’s World Championship as it could lose significance with there being two active best-on-best competitions.

Conclusion

Come 2028, it is very unlikely that hockey fans see the NHL host a World Cup using a format similar to the one mentioned above. That is not to say that this proposed format is perfect either, but it would be an improvement on previous editions. What truly matters is that the World Cup of Hockey is finally played on a regular schedule, not once a decade, and all national teams are given the opportunity to participate.