The IIHF World Junior Championship is an annual event organized by the International Ice Hockey Federation for national under-20 ice hockey teams from around the world. It is traditionally held from late December to the beginning of January. The main tournament features the top ten ranked hockey nations in the world, comprising the "Top Division", from which a world champion is crowned. There are also three lower pools—divisions I, II and III—that each play separate tournaments playing for the right to be promoted to a higher pool with the last place team facing relegation to a lower pool.
The first official tournament was held in 1977. Prior to that, there had been invitational tournaments in 1974, 1975 and 1976 that were not sanctioned by the IIHF.
As of 2015, 39 official tournaments have been staged. Seven nations have won a gold medal and ten have won medals. Historically, the tournament has been dominated by the Soviet Union/Russia and Canada, together accounting for 29 of the 39 gold medals awarded. Canada leads the all-time gold medal count with 16 and have won a total of 29 medals, while the Soviet Union/Russia have won the most medals with 33.
|Year||Gold||Silver||Bronze||Host city (cities)||Host country|
|1974||Soviet Union||Finland||Canada||Leningrad||Soviet Union|
- (#) Number of tournaments won at the time.
These tournaments have been announced.
|Year||Host city (cities)||Host country|
|2017||Montreal and Toronto||Canada|
The unofficial tournaments held prior to 1977 are not included in this table.
Countries in italics no longer compete at the World Championships.
|United States of America||3||1||4||8|
| Czech Republic|
- α During the final game of the tournament, Canada and the Soviet Union became engaged in a violent bench-clearing brawl while Canada was leading 4–2. Consequently, the game was declared null and void, and both teams were ejected from the tournament; while the Soviets were out of medal contention, Canada was playing for the gold medal and were guaranteed at least a bronze.
- β Canada will host the tournament every 3 or 4 years. In 1990, Canada decided to switch years with Finland.
- "IIHF World U20 Championships", International Ice Hockey Federation. Retrieved on 2008-06-12.
- "World Juniors–medal Winners Since 1974", TSN. Retrieved on 2008-06-12.
- "Team Canada > National Junior Team > Past Results", Hockey Canada. Retrieved on 2008-06-12.
- "Medal standings", worldjuniors2008.com. Retrieved on 2008-06-12.
- ↑ "Tournament playing format", worldjuniors2008.com. Retrieved on 2008-06-26.
- ↑ "International hockey timeline", International Ice Hockey Federation. Retrieved on 2008-06-12.
- ↑ "IIHF World U20 Championships" International Ice Hockey Federation. Retrieved 2009-11-20.
- ↑ http://www.iihf.com/channels1011/wm20/home.html
- ↑ World Juniors in Helsinki. IIHF. Retrieved on 20 August 2014.
- ↑ http://www2.tsn.ca/world_jrs/story/?id=425844
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Canada to host more tourneys. International Ice Hockey Federation (2010-05-09). Retrieved on 2015-01-05.
- ↑ USA Hockey Awarded Rights to Host Four Additional World Championships. NAHL. Retrieved on 6 January 2011.
- ↑ Doug Harrison. Backgrounder–2008 World Junior Hockey Championship. CBC Sports. Retrieved on 2008-06-11.
- ↑ "Team Canada > National Junior Team > History", Hockey Canada. Retrieved on 2008-06-12.
|This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at List of IIHF World Under-20 Championship medalists. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Ice Hockey Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License 3.0 (Unported) (CC-BY-SA).|