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:
“In every death, a busy world comes to an end.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)