Canada vs. Great Britain: 2024 IIHF World Championship Odds, Prediction

Jordan Ramsay
Last Updated: May 10, 2024

Preliminary action for Group A at the 2024 IIHF World Championship continues on Saturday morning with Team Canada facing Team Great Britain at Prague Arena for a 6:20 a.m. ET puck drop.

Canada is favoured to win by 6.5 goals on the IIHF World Championship odds, with the total set at 8.0 goals.

Make sure to check out our complete list of World Championship game odds, World Championship futures and World Championship specials and props.

Canada vs. Great Britain World Championship Odds

Great Britain has medalled twice in tournament history, winning bronze in 1924 and gold in 1936. Canada has medalled in seven of the last eight tournaments and won a record 28th gold medal at last year’s tournament in Finland and Latvia.

Great Britain isn’t a staple of the top division, so there isn’t a lot of history between these teams and this will be just the 11th time they have met at the World Championships since 1935. Canada has a perfect 10-0-0 record in the all-time head-to-head series, outscoring Great Britain 77-8 in the process. The teams last met in 2019, with Canada outshooting the Brits 56-12 in an 8-0 preliminary round blowout.

Canada enters the tournament as +300 favourites to win, while Great Britain shares the longest odds with Poland at a ridiculous +100,000. On the dismal side, Great Britain and Poland are also -275 co-favourites to be relegated. If you’re looking for player props, a solid value play could be Dylan Cozens to be the top goalscorer in the tournament at +2000. Cozens scored a tournament-high seven goals the last time he played at the World Championship in 2022.

Team Canada

Canada is as stacked as ever and they’re bringing in an all-NHL roster with plenty of recent international success. Jack McBain and Joel Hofer are returning from last year’s gold medal team, while Michael Bunting, Brandon Hagel, Andrew Mangiapane, Nick Paul and Owen Power all won gold in Latvia in 2021. Recent World Junior gold medalists include Hofer, Connor Bedard, Bowen Byram, Dylan Cozens, Nico Daws, Dylan Guenther, Dawson Mercer and Olen Zellweger.

Canada concluded their two-game pre-tournament schedule with a 4-0 win over Hungary in Budapest on Tuesday. Byram, Power, Guenther and Colton Parayko all scored, with Canada firing 66 shots on net. Jordan Binnington made 21 saves.

A late addition to the Canada’s roster is Toronto Maple Leafs captain John Tavares, who will meet the team in Czechia on Friday. Tavares joins L.A. Kings forward Pierre-Luc Dubois as well as Tampa Bay’s Nick Paul and Brandon Hagel as players to join the team following first-round playoff exits.

Team Great Britain

Great Britain’s roster is mostly made up of players from Britain’s Elite Ice Hockey League, the top level of hockey in the United Kingdom. One of the more notable players is Liam Kirk, who played two seasons in the OHL with the Peterborough Petes from 2018 to 2020. The 24-year-old was a 2018 seventh-round draft pick of the Arizona Coyotes, but he’s spent the last two seasons in Europe, playing in Finland and Czechia.

Great Britain’s lone exhibition game ended in a 5-2 loss against Kazakhstan on Tuesday in Czechia. Kirk and Sam Ruopp scored the goals. Ruopp, who is actually from Saskatchewan, was a fifth-round pick of the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2015. He played five seasons in the WHL with the Regina Pats and three seasons playing for the University of Saskatchewan before making the move to play pro in Europe ahead of the 2021-22 season.