About Moose Jaw 2023

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ⒸMoose Jaw 2023 LOC

Eight teams – USA, Canada, South Korea, Czechia, Norway, China, Germany and Italy – will contest in Moose Jaw, Canada for the 2023 World Championships A-Pool.

It will mark the first time Canada hosts a World Para Ice Hockey sanctioned event and the first major event in the sport to be played in the country outside of the Vancouver 2010 Paralympic Winter Games.

All matches are due to be held at the Moose Jaw Events Centre.

The venue

The Moose Jaw Events Centre has a capacity of 4,956 spectators and the ice rink is 61m x 26m (200ft X 85ft).

The Moose Jaw Events Centre, Southern Saskatchewan’s premier events centre, has previously hosted two (2) Curling Canada’s Scotties Tournament of Hearts, Canada Cup of Curling, Hockey Canada’s Telus Cup, the Canadian Wheelchair Curling National Championships (March 2023), Canadian Hockey League’s Canada/Russia series in addition to international recording artist’s Dolly Parton, Motley Crue, Backstreet Boys, Alan Jackson to name a few. The Moose Jaw Events Centre is also home to the Western Hockey League’s Moose Jaw Warriors.

Moose Jaw is a significant industrial centre and important railway junction for the province’s agricultural produce and is home to the Canadian Arms Forces Snowbirds, Canada’s military aerobatic air demonstration team.

The teams

The USA will enter the tournament as the defending Paralympic and world champions, having won its record-breaking fifth world title in 2021 and Paralympic gold in Beijing in 2022. The USA has won five of the last seven World Championships. Host nation Canada is the reigning world and Paralympic silver medallists and have four world titles to its name, last claiming gold on the world stage in 2017.

The event will also feature three-time World Championships medallists South Korea, Paralympic bronze medallists China, five-time World Championship medallists Norway, the next Paralympic Winter Games hosts Italy, as well as Czechia and Germany. Both China and Germany are newcomers to the A-Pool after finishing in the top two at the 2021 World Championships B-Pool.