2017 IIHF Men’s World Championships: How to Watch (some of) the tournament

Look, I won’t sugarcoat this for you people: watching your NHL team’s players in the IIHF World Championships means their professional seasons are over. This isn’t news to Islanders fans.

But the good news is that, even if the Stanley Cup isn’t an option, you still get a few more games to watch players you have a vested interest in. This year, six Islanders (or five and one potential future Islander) will represent their countries at the tournament and you don’t have to be in Germany or France to watch them.

NBCSports.com and the network’s accompanying app will be streaming all of Team USA’s games throughout the preliminary rounds, with the channel also airing them as well. Islanders teammates Brock Nelson and Anders Lee are both on the team, along with Jack Eichel, Johnny Gaudreau, Jacob Trouba and a whole bunch of Red Wings. Old friend Jack Capuano is also an assistant coach for the squad.

For Canadians (or those with, uh, other means of watching), TSN will be the official carrier of every game of the tournament. So if you want to watch Calvin de Haan (Team Canada), Ilya Sorokin (Team Russia) or Thomas Greiss and Dennis Seidenberg (hometown Team Germany) playing against each other without Team USA present, you’ll need to be a TSN subscriber.

Team USA opens their games against the host country in Cologne, Germany today at 2:15, with Canada and the Czech Republic playing at the same time in the second location at Paris, France. The first game of the tournament is Sweden-Russia at 11 am, also at Cologne.

The Islanders have handy schedules for each player posted here. The full tournament schedule can be found on the IIHF’s site. Keep them ready so you don’t miss any afternoon hockey. If you’re a social media creature, you can follow the action at the IIHF’s official Twitter account, @IIHFHockey.

NBCSN will also stream all of the knockout round games starting on Thursday the 18th with the quarterfinals. The gold medal game will be on Sunday, May 21st at 2:45 ET. If you want to at least pay this thing the bare minimum of attention, you can check out these games on NBCSports.com (but not the network).

As I’ve said before, in international competition, I’m inclined to root for Islander over country. I’m not sure if that makes me a bad American or something, but sincere best of luck to everyone. And as I have also said before: DON’T GET HURT.