saskhab wrote:
Av will be pleased to know that South Korea finished 25th in the World Championships overall standings (as far as I can tell, I have a margin of error of 1 as it's difficult to tell in the lower pools). They were ranked 35th in the World Rankings heading in and have now leapfrogged past Australia and Turkey for 33rd. Because they are now firmly in the Div. 1 pool and the countries ranked around them are more Div. 2 fodder, they should be able to jump past Mexico (32) and Bulgaria (31) by next year, and perhaps even Spain to move into the top 30.
The World Rankings are very static. It's rare anyone moves more than 2 spots in a year, and in general movement is rare. USA will likely drop 2 or 3 spots from #3 with their 13th place showing, depending on what the Czechs and Swiss do. A possibility exists that if the Swiss win it all, they'll move ahead of the USA in world ranking, which would be really weird.
South Korea's rise up the charts is quite impressive. Finishing 5th in their Div. 1 pool (out of 6 teams, avoiding relegation) is quite the feat for a lower tier country.
It's probably an inaccurate ranking... They are getting punished for not being in the Olympic qualifying tournaments, because they weren't ranked in the top 30. That pretty much guarantees that you are keeping those other countries below the cutoff point until they are really a top 20-25 nation.
BTW, nice job on defending the US of A, but I still feel like it's a bit of a step back in light of the big steps forward (WJC gold, Olympic silver) that USA Hockey made.