Strong Performance by Hong Kong, but Turkey Win Qualifier

Ice Hockey—Women's World Championship Qualifier

Turkey celebrates their important win against Hong Kong to move them into the lead with 6-points on day-2 of the 2015 IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship Division II Group B Qualifier tournament at Mega Ice, on Thursday Feb 19, 2015. Bill Cox/Epoch Times

HONG KONG—Turkey regained their World Championship Division II Group B Qualification place they lost last year by beating all three rivals in the 2015 IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship Division II Group B Qualifier tournament at Mega Ice, on Saturday Feb 21, 2015.

Turkey proved too strong for Bulgaria and South Africa racking up results of 11-3, and 8-4 respectively. Turkey’s match against Hong Kong was closer with Turkey coming away 4-1 winners. Turkey therefore take the qualifier place with a 9-point perfect score and will play in the IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s Division II group B World Championship in 2016.

Hong Kong put on a great display in each of their 3-matches in front of their many supporters finishing as runners-up in the competition on 6-points having beaten South Africa 4-3 on the first day of the event and winning against Bulgaria 5-1 on day-3, Saturday Feb 21.

South Africa took 3rd place with their 6-0 win over Bulgaria on day-2.

The final positions reflect the level of play shown by the four sides during the tournament. Turkey showed added power and were generally in attacking mode for much of their matches. South Africa countered well against Turkey to pull 4-shots back in period three when Turkey went through a short period of some disarray, but in general Turkey were in control when playing Bulgaria and South Africa.

Hong Kong was the only side to show real flair to match Turkey and lost in a close match with many attacks on goal at either end, but as the game went on Turkey showed added strength to win 4-1. Hong Kong contested all of their matches with a strong determination, showed good skating abilities and were enterprising in attack. With this performance Hong Kong moved up in the standings to second place compared with finishing bottom of the qualifications against Mexico, South Africa and Bulgaria in Mexico in 2014. This year’s performance underlined Hong Kong’s considerable improvement during the last year.

IIHF Women’s World Championship Division II, 2015
The Women’s World Championship Division II, 2015 has two groups ‘A’ and ‘B’. The ‘A’ event will be held in Dumfries, Scotland starting on March 30 through to April 5 while the group ‘B’ competition will be in Spain between March 7 and 13.

Both groups feature 6-teams. Group ‘A’ teams are Kazakhstan, Great Britain, South Korea, Poland, New Zealand and Croatia. Group ‘B’ teams are Australia, Slovenia, Spain, Iceland, Belgium and Mexico.

IIHF Women’s World Championships 2015
The Women’s World Championships will be contested between 8-teams in Malmo Sweden with 6-event days, starting March 28, 2015.

The Teams will be split into two pools for the initial round-robin phase comprising USA, Canada, Russia and Finland in Pool-A and Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and Japan in Pool-B.