After the third game in two days needed to be cancelled due to positive cases on an individual team, today the IIHF announced that the remainder of the 2022 World Junior Championships in Edmonton and Red Deer, Alberta, Canada would be cancelled.

The decision was made following a positive case on the Russian team, necessitating a forfeiture of their game against Slovakia. This came just hours after Czechia had to forfeit their game against Finland, and just a day after the United States was forced to forfeit their matchup against Switzerland. The IIHF had determined that “the sportive integrity of the event has been compromised,” and thus the remainder of games were called off, only on the fourth day of the tournament. No make-up dates, if any will happen, have been announced.

The news comes after a week of controversial IIHF cancellations, in particular cancelling the Women’s Under-18 World Championships in Sweden next month, along with the remainder of Under-20 men’s tournaments, impacting the World Juniors in particular, which announced that the 2023 tournament will see no relegation and include newly-promoted Belarus, making the tournament have a minimum of 11 teams at the 2023 World Juniors in Novosibirsk and Omsk, Russia.

Another unfortunate cancellation that is impacting the hockey world, as the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 continues to make a massive impact on a global scale.

Photo Credit: 2022 World Junior Championship – IIHF – HHOF – IOC