Top Division
Each round was a round-robin tournament, where the teams played each other once within their group. The Preliminary Round was divided into two groups: Group A and Group B, which included five teams each. From each group, the top three teams qualified for the playoffs; the 1st-ranked teams earned a direct trip to the Semifinals, while the 2nd and 3rd-ranked teams qualified for the Quarterfinals. The 4th and 5th-ranked teams had to play in the Relegation Round, where the three best teams qualified for the Top Division tournament in 2013, with the last-placed team being relegated to the 2013 Division I tournament. In the Semifinals, the directly-qualified Semifinalists faced the winners from the Quarterfinals.
Read more about this topic: 2012 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships
Famous quotes containing the words top and/or division:
“Your top has sunk too low,
Your base has spread too wide,
For you to roll one stone
Down if you tried.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“That crazed girl improvising her music,
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,
Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling she knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship
Her knee-cap broken.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)