Canada was leading the old World Ranking with a margin of 120 points to second-placed Russia. Now it’s a mere five points after Canada has lost its points from Sochi 2014 and finished third in PyeongChang 2018 while the Olympic Athletes from Russia went all the way to gold. It will be a big head-to-head race for the number-one spot at the upcoming 2018 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship in Denmark in May.

Also the next two spots remained in the same order. Sweden comes in third place followed by archrival Finland. The Czech Republic moved up to fifth place at the expense of the United States.

Germany’s silver-medal campaign in PyeongChang made the team move up to seventh place at the expense of neighbouring country Switzerland, now 8th. It wasn’t enough to move up more than a place but the Germans now hold a comfortable margin of 205 points to the Swiss.

Germany has never been ranked higher before since the IIHF World Ranking was introduced in 2004. The last time Germany was a top-seven nation over several years was in the early ‘90s.

Norway remains in ninth place and Slovakia is back in the top-10 overtaking Belarus, which failed to qualify for the Olympics.

Thanks to its entry into the Olympics, Korea improved once again, from 21st to 18th place. This trend may continue since the Koreans are one of the two teams that earned promotion to the 2018 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship (Austria being the other) and will thus earn points from a top-16 finish next spring.

Click here for the full 2018 IIHF Men’s World Ranking.

Click here for the 2018 IIHF Women's World Ranking.