Tardif blames COVID for women's U18 cancelation: 'This is not a gender issue'

IIHF president Luc Tardif addressed recent criticism over the organization's decision to cancel the U18 Women's World Championship for a second consecutive year.

The tournament was set to take place in Sweden in January but was nixed last week with no rescheduling plans.

"This is not a gender issue, this is a COVID-19 issue," Tardif said, according to Adam Steiss of the IIHF's website. "I would ask in turn how is it fair to postpone all the time the top divisions and always to simply cancel the lower divisions? These cancellations have affected six tournaments, not just one, including two men's U20 events that critics seem to conveniently forget.

"In a normal season, we are not canceling anything. The IIHF is not in the business of canceling tournaments, we are here to play tournaments. But we are battling circumstances that are out of our control, and to be perfectly honest we have to think of the future too."

The IIHF is currently hosting the world juniors in Edmonton and Red Deer, but Tardif said that tournament is different from the U18 Women's World Championship.

"Is there an economic incentive to host the men's world championship and world juniors every year no matter what? Absolutely. But people misunderstand that this is because we favor men's hockey over women's, which is completely false," Tardif said.

"The revenue generated from these two events enables our federation to survive and support the operation of all other IIHF world championship events. So if I have to make every effort to host a specific tournament to ensure the survival of other events, then it is my responsibility as IIHF president to do this."

Many prominent women's players called out the IIHF following the cancellation of the U18 Women's World Championship. USA Hockey asked the IIHF on Monday to reschedule the event.