Switzerland to play in Belarus
Robert Hradil / RvS.Media
Switzerland will face Russia, Belarus, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Denmark, and Great Britain in the group stage of the tournament. Group B, consisting of Latvia, Canada, Finland, the United States, Germany, Norway, Italy, and Kazakhstan, will play in Riga.
The seeding of the groups is based on the IIHF ranking. Switzerland currently ranks eighth and it would thus originally have faced Canada, but the organizers swapped Russia and Canada to "accommodate special organizational needs".
