The April edition of the 2018 IIHF Women's World Ranking has been released. The
United States of America continue to lead it ahead of eternal rival Canada.

The new version takes into consideration the points earned at the 2018 IIHF Ice
Hockey Women's World Championship program that was played over the last few weeks in the lower divisions. Because the top-level Women's Worlds is not played in Olympic years, the points from the Olympic Winter Games and the Olympic Qualification respectively are used for the top-nine nations of the Women's World Championship program as it was done after Sochi 2014.

Finland follows in third place as best European nation before Russia. Switzerland moved to fifth place at the expense of Sweden and Japan is now seventh at the expense of Germany. The Czech Republic remains in ninth place. The top-10 are now completed by France, which earned promotion to the 2019 IIHF
Ice Hockey Women's World Championship in Finland that has been extended to ten teams.

In total 38 countries have been ranked who have during the last four years participated in the IIHF Ice Hockey Women's World Championship program and/or the Olympic program. Additional countries play international women's ice hockey
in the IIHF Challenge Cup of Asia program or other international events.

Click here to access the ranking.

http://www.iihf.com/home-of-hockey/news/news-singleview/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=12620
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