The 1939 Ice Hockey World Championships were held between February 3 and February 12, 1939 in Zürich and Basel, Switzerland. The fourteen teams participating in the 1939 World Championship were initially divided into four preliminary groups: two groups of four and two groups of three. The top two teams in each group advanced to the second round. The eight teams in the second round played in two groups of four, with the top two from each group advancing to the third (final) round. The six teams not advancing to the second round played a consolation round in two groups of 3 teams with the winners of each group playing a one game play-off for 9th place. The four teams not advancing from the second round played a consolation round for placed 5 through 8.
Canada won its eleventh world championship title while the host, Switzerland, won its third European championship. Switzerland and Czechoslovakia both earned one point in the final round but Switzerland won a one-game playoff (and thus the European Championship) after the World Championships were completed.
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or ice:
“The embers glowing in his bosom could set the world on fire, but they cannot warm the heart of a single human being.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)