The 2022 IIHF Women’s World Championship is into the knockout round. Both semifinal games are being played today (September 3), with the bronze- and gold-medal games slated for tomorrow, September 4 (see below for TV schedule details).
This year’s tournament, hosted by Denmark, marks the first time the top division women’s world championship is being played in the Olympic year since women’s hockey debuted at the 1998 Nagano Winter Games.
Here is a guide that includes info on how fans in the U.S. can watch on TV, final group standings, an overview of the tournament format, and procedures for overtime. This guide will be updated throughout the 2022 Women’s World Championship so be sure to bookmark this page and check back for updates.
Fans in the U.S. can watch the 2022 IIHF Women’s World Championship on TV via NHL Network, which will air TSN’s coverage.
Through the quarterfinal round, the only games airing on NHL Network are those involving either the U.S. or Canada, which is notable when compared to coverage of the U18 Women’s World Championship earlier this summer. This guide will be updated if additional coverage is added.
Just like at recent world championships, women’s hockey competition in Denmark featured two weighted pools, with the top ranked nations competing in group A.
As a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the team representing the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) — a designation that is the result of the nation’s state-sponsored doping program — is currently suspended by the IIHF. With Russia barred, Sweden was invited and seeded into group B, while Japan moved up to group A.
The tournament began with round-robin play, with each team playing four games against the other teams in the group. At the end of group play, all five group A teams will moved on to the quarterfinal round, along with the top three group B teams. The last-place team in Group B (Denmark) was relegated to the lower division World Championship tournament for 2023.
Given hockey #history, it seems likely this info will become important at least once or twice during the 2022 IIHF Women’s World Championship:
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The Rugby World Cup, the premier event in women’s union 15s, is underway in New Zealand. The tournament began on October 8 and continues through November 12, 2022. Originally scheduled for 2021, the quadrennial competition was pushed back a year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Host New Zealand is the defending champion, while the U.S. will be aiming to return to the podium for the first time since 1998.
This year marks the first time the women’s tournament will be held under a gender-neutral name. In 2019, World Rugby announced that it would remove the word “women’s” from the World Cup name in order to match the non-gender-marked (men’s) World Cup.
See below for a brief overview of the tournament format and info on how to watch every Rugby World Cup game. This guide will be updated with results and scores throughout the tournament.
Fans in the United States can stream every game live on Peacock, NBCSports.com, and the NBC Sports app. Some games will also air on CNBC.
Here is the complete TV and streaming schedule:
Friday night, October 14 into Saturday morning, October 15:
Saturday, October 15 into Sunday morning, October 16:
Friday night, October 21 into Saturday morning, October 22:
Saturday night, October 22 into Sunday morning, October 23:
Sunday, October 23:
Friday night, October 28 into Saturday morning, October 29:
Saturday night, October 29 into Sunday morning, October 30:
Friday night, November 4 into Saturday morning, October 5:
Saturday, November 5:
Friday night, November 11 into Saturday morning, October 12:
Saturday, November 12:
Friday night, October 7 into Saturday morning, October 8:
Saturday night, October 8 into Sunday morning, October 9:
The 12-team tournament begins with round-robin pool play. The three pools are as follows:
After pool play, the top two teams in each group — along with the two best third-place teams — will advance to the quarterfinals. The tournament progresses using a single-elimination bracket format.
U.S. Soccer and the NWSL were so focused on putting and keeping players on the field that protecting those players fell by the wayside.
That was one of the key takeaways from the U.S. Soccer-commissioned report released last week. Former acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Q. Yates and the law firm King & Spalding found that emotional abuse and sexual misconduct are systemic in women’s soccer and that league’s lack of basic workplace protections created an environment in which abuse could thrive.
“They did not institute the most basic of workplace protections,” the report explains. “For most of the League’s history, there was no anti-harassment policy, no anti-retaliation policy, and no anti-fraternization policy. Nor were there independent reporting lines, coaching codes of conduct, or any guidelines regarding the due diligence necessary to hire a coach. Most teams did not have human resource functions, and if they did, some teams did not believe those services were available to players.”
The report continues: “Without basic protections in place, what followed, almost inevitably, was the systemic abuse of players.”
It wasn’t until the spring of 2021, the start of the NWSL’s ninth season, that the league published its first anti-harassment policy. And that was only after 240 players — organized by Alex Morgan — sent then NWSL commissioner Lisa Baird a letter demanding workplace protections and a way to report complaints. (The current policy can be found here.)
While the Yates report focused on the NWSL and U.S. Soccer, its takeaways are broadly applicable to other leagues.
“We hope that other leagues, other teams, other Federations look inward. The whole goal of this is so that no one else suffers from the abuse that so many players in this league have faced,” said USWNT captain Becky Sauerbrunn. “If that takes people (being) introspective and creating policies and anti-harassment policies — things that we were very late doing — no better time to start than right now.”
Following publication of the Yates report, On Her Turf surveyed women’s professional sports leagues that compete in the U.S. about whether they have an active anti-harassment policy in place. Here is a summary of the survey:
On Her Turf also reached out to four organizations that are in the process of launching leagues about their plans for player safety policies.
Despite billing itself as a professional league, the Yates report found that the NWSL’s lacking infrastructure — from poor training and playing facilities to dangerous living situations — resulted in an environment that was far from professional.
“In the haste to get the League off the ground, the Federation conducted limited financial due diligence on the new league’s prospective owners and did not put in place the infrastructure or planning necessary to support the League over the long haul,” the report says.
“Truth Be Told,” an ESPN E60 on the NWSL that premiered last week, provided additional insight on how the league’s startup mindset and cost-cutting measures — from salaries as low as $6,000 to the use of host families to the absence of a union — led to widespread issues.
“You would have thought that, in launching a business, there were some pretty basic things you could look at: background checks, anti-discrimination policy, an anti-harassment policy, an HR person,” NWSL Players Association executive director Meghann Burke told E60. “(No one was saying) you’re not going to use a trash can to do ice baths. We’re going to give you a bathroom that’s not the woods. We’re not going to provide adequate medical staffing, we’re not going to provide adequate training facilities. It was a severe control of costs without, on the flip side, a plan for how to grow revenue.”
“The standards were low — very low — but we just wanted to play,” USWNT and San Diego Wave forward Alex Morgan said of the players’ initial mindset.
“The league was set up hastily, in a way that got it off the ground and gave us a place to play — and I think every player would say that we’re thankful and appreciative for that — but it was also done with absolutely zero guardrails. And that’s just unacceptable,” USWNT and OL Reign forward Megan Rapinoe told media last week.
Even if NWSL players wanted to speak up, fear of seeing the league collapse kept them silent.
“Players were also repeatedly enlisted in the effort to keep the League afloat by protecting it from scandal and were told to be grateful that they had an opportunity to play professional soccer at all,” the Yates report explains. “The threat of team or league failure was acute and persistent. The NWSL was the third attempt to field a women’s professional league and was established with low capital requirements to ensure the league had eight teams. Many teams seemed to be one bad season away from shuttering. Players reported being told by Federation leadership and certain team owners that the League was not commercially successful enough to warrant further financial investment, and that the only way to ensure the League’s survival was for players to support the League.”
“I think everyone was afraid to ultimately cause the league’s demise,” USWNT and Washington Spirit goalie Aubrey Kingsbury told E60. “We knew it was fragile.”
Conditions in the NWSL have improved in the last year, thanks especially to the NWSL’s first ever collective bargaining agreement. But the Yates report recommends U.S. Soccer “strengthen player safety requirements in professional leagues” and consider whether “all owners are financially committed to the NWSL and are providing a professional environment that is safe and respectful of players” — two takeaways key for women’s leagues across the board.
“I think these hostile conditions that are kind of now being unearthed and publicly revealed, but it’s things that we’ve been dealing with for the entirety of our careers,” said USWNT and OL Reign defender Alana Cook. “We have gotten to this point because we have learned how to deal with the difficulties surrounding what we do.”
“We, as women soccer players, have faced a lot, not just in these last two years, but for a very long time,” echoed Sauerbrunn. “You have to enact as much change as you can, while also demanding more from those that have the power to do so.”
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