When the 2021 IIHF Women’s World Championship was canceled earlier this year just as players were preparing to travel to Halifax, Nova Scotia, it wasn’t at all clear whether it would find a new home. Quickly, locales from across North America started to chime in, offering their venues for the event. Today, the IIHF announced that it has officially selected Calgary, Alberta as the new host city.
The event will be held from August 20-31 at WinSport Arena in Canada Olympic Park, with ten teams competing. President of Hockey Canada Scott Smith released a statement on the change:
Despite the unfortunate cancellation of the IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship in April, Hockey Canada’s ongoing priority has been to host the event this year, and we have remained committed to running a world-class event in Canada. A tremendous amount of work and collaboration with Alberta Health and Alberta Health Services has taken place to ensure the event will be held in a safe and secure manner. We are grateful to the Province of Alberta, the City of Calgary, Tourism Calgary, WinSport and all our event partners for working together to provide the best women’s hockey players in the world an opportunity to compete for a gold medal.
Teams from around the world are expected to arrive in Calgary on August 10 and will be required to enter a quarantine period before starting preparation for the tournament. The full schedule will be released at a later date.
This announcement comes just after the PWHPA completed a part of their Dream Gap Tour in Calgary, the first time games had been played in Canada by the organization in over a year. Now, a few months later, the best in the world will gather in the city to try and take home the gold.