1996 Men's World Ice Hockey Championships

The 1996 Ice Hockey World Championship took place in Austria 21 April - 5 May. The games were played in Vienna. Thirty-six nations competed at four levels, with Slovakia making their first appearance in Group A.

Twelve teams took part in Group A, with the first round split into two groups of six, with the first four from each group advancing to the quarter-finals. This was the 60th World Championship and the Czech Republic beat Canada in the final to become World Champions for the first time. (Czechoslovakia had won the World Championship six times). The final game was tied at two apiece before Martin Procházka scored with nineteen seconds left, an empty net goal sealed the victory. In the bronze medal game, Brian Rolston scored at 4:48 of overtime to win the first medal in 34 years for team USA. The unfortunate Russians did not lose a game in regulation time in the entire tournament, but finished fourth.

Consolation Round 11-12 Place
Austria was relegated to Group B.

World Championship Group B (Netherlands)
Played 10–20 April in Eindhoven. Latvia won at this level for the first time. In their final game, superb goaltending by Arturs Irbe kept them in it, and a late tying goal by Olegs Znaroks sealed the tournament victory. The final game had high drama for the host crowd, the Japanese and Danish teams among them. If the Netherlands were to lose to Poland, they would finish last and be relegated, a tie and Japan would be last, a win and Denmark would be last. A third period goal by Poland sealed Japan's fate. Latvia was promoted to Group A while Japan was relegated to Group C.

World Championship Group C (Slovenia)
Played 22–31 March in Jesenice and Kranj. For the fourth year in row the Kazakhs and Ukrainians met in Group C. For the first time the Kazakhs came out on top, and it was the difference in winning the tournament. Kazakhstan was promoted to Group B while Croatia was relegated to Group D.

World Championship Group D (Lithuania)
Played in Kaunas and Elektrenai 25–31 March. To narrow the field of the bottom tier to eight nations, two regional qualifying tournaments were used.

Group 1 (Australia)
Played 5th and 6 November 1995 in Sydney.

Group 2 (Israel)
Played 27–29 January 1996 in Metulla. The Greek team won both their games, but were found to have an ineligible roster, so both games were declared 5–0 forfeits in favour of the opposing team.

Group 2
Ironically, the Israeli team that had qualified for the tournament because of the Greek forfeits, had to forfeit its first two games because they used two Russian players who did not have the proper clearance to play.

Final Round 29-32 Place
Host Lithuania won all five games to earn promotion to Group C.

Ranking and statistics
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Final standings
The final standings of the tournament according to IIHF: