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. Team USA games will be televised by NHL Network, as will many other games. Team USA games will be broadcast on KFAN (100.3 FM) or KFAN+ (96.7 FM).

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

Russia is banned from this year’s tournament by the International Ice Hockey Federation because of the war in Ukraine.

The favorites: Team USA won the past two tournaments. The U.S. coach is Bob Motzko of the Gophers and the roster features seven Minnesotans. Motzko led the Americans to gold in 2017 and bronze the following year.