2012 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships

The 2012 IIHF U20 World Championship was the 36th World Junior Ice Hockey Championships (WJHC). It was hosted in Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It began on December 26, 2011, and ended with the gold medal game played in Calgary on January 5, 2012. Sweden defeated defending-champion Russia 1–0 in overtime to win their first title in 31 years. Russian forward Evgeny Kuznetsov was named MVP of the tournament. Denmark was relegated to Division I and Germany was promoted to the 2013 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships.

Canada missed the final for the first time in 11 years when they lost 6–5 against Russia in a semifinal in which Canada were down 6–1 halfway through the third period. However, the Canadians extended their consecutive medal streak at the tournament to 14 (5 gold, 6 silver, 3 bronze) with a 4–0 victory over Finland in the bronze medal game. The fourth place finish for Finland was their best result in the tournament since 2006. The United States ended up in the relegation round for the first time since 1999.

Attendance
As part of their bid, the two cities projected that they would generate a tournament record attendance in excess of 475,000 fans and provide an economic benefit of $42 million to the province of Alberta. Following a reserved offering of 10- and 21-game ticket packs for Edmonton and Calgary games respectively to season ticket holders of the Oilers, Oil Kings, Flames and Hitmen, the tournament committee held a lottery to award the right to purchase the remaining seats. While the entry deadline was supposed to coincide with the conclusion of the 2011 tournament, organizers were flooded with so many entries that their website servers crashed. Organizers were overwhelmed by the response; over 187,000 entries were received for the draw.

Calling the demand unprecedented, Hockey Canada announced that the 17,000 ticket packages made available to lottery winners had sold out in a matter of days, a year in advance of the tournament. While organizers were pleased with the result, the way the lottery was handled has angered fans who won the right to purchase tickets but were unable to do so as no tickets were left when their turn to buy arrived.

Ultimately, a new attendance record was set, but not by the margin initially anticipated. The total of 455,342 fans was 2,060 fans more than the previous record of 453,282 from 2009. Though many more tickets were sold as part of tournament packages, the IIHF only counts tickets actually used in its figures.

Top division
Each round was a round-robin tournament, where the teams played each other once within their group. The Preliminary Round was divided into two groups: Group A and Group B, which included five teams each. From each group, the top three teams qualified for the playoffs; the 1st-ranked teams earned a direct trip to the Semifinals, while the 2nd and 3rd-ranked teams qualified for the Quarterfinals. The 4th and 5th-ranked teams had to play in the Relegation Round, where the three best teams qualified for the Top Division tournament in 2013, with the last-placed team being relegated to the 2013 Division I tournament. In the Semifinals, the directly-qualified Semifinalists faced the winners from the Quarterfinals.

Group A
All round robin games held in Calgary, Alberta, at the Scotiabank Saddledome.

All times local (MST/UTC−7)

Group B
All round robin games held in Edmonton, Alberta, at Rexall Place.

All times local (MST/UTC−7)

Relegation round
The results from matches between teams from the same group in the preliminary round were carried forward to this round.

All times local (MST/UTC−7)

Gold medal celebration
Sweden's gold medal win was their first since 1981, as well as their second gold medal in total. The gold medal was celebrated on January 7, 2012, in front of over 6,000 fans at Kungsträdgården in Stockholm.

Division I A
The Division I A tournament was played in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, from 11 to 17 December 2011.

Division I B
The Division I B tournament was played in Tychy, Poland, from 12 to 18 December 2011.

Division II A
The Division II A tournament was played in Donetsk, Ukraine, from 12 to 18 December 2011.

Division II B
The Division II B tournament was played in Tallinn, Estonia, from 10 to 16 December 2011.

Division III
The Division III tournament was played in Dunedin, New Zealand, from 16 to 22 January 2012. Although originally scheduled to participate, North Korea withdrew from the tournament for unspecified reasons.