What you need to know about the World Junior Hockey Championships in Minnesota

Who: The best under-20 players from each country are in the 10-team tournament.

Where: Grand Casino Arena in St. Paul and 3M Arena at Mariucci in Minneapolis.

When: Preliminary round games start Dec. 26, with the bronze and gold medal games on Monday, Jan. 5.

Group A: United States, Sweden, Slovakia, Germany and Switzerland will play preliminary round games at Grand Casino Arena.

Group B: Canada, Finland, Denmark, Czechia and Latvia will play preliminary round games at Mariucci.

The games: The tournament schedule is here.

Format: The top four teams in each pool advance to the quarterfinals Jan. 2.

The favorites: Team USA won the past two tournaments. There are nine Minnesotans on the team’s 30-player roster, which must be cut to 25 before the tournament. The U.S. coach is Bob Motzko of the Gophers. He led the Americans to gold in 2017 and bronze the following year.