International hockey is coming to Delta, starting Thursday night, as a co-host of the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge.
The tournament, which returns for the first time since 2019, will feature three Canadian teams matching up against Czechia, Finland, Sweden and the United States.
Each of the seven teams will play six preliminary-round games from Nov. 3-11, with the top four in the standings advancing to the medal round. The Langley Events Centre will host 16 games, including three all-Canadian match-ups and both medal-round games on Nov. 12. The seven remaining games will be played at Sungod Arena in Delta, beginning with Team Canada White facing Sweden on Thursday at 7 p.m.
The rest of the Sungod schedule is as follows:
Friday Nov. 4: USA vs. Czechia, 7 p.m.
Saturday, Nov. 5: Sweden vs. USA, 7 p.m.
Monday, Nov. 7: Czechia vs. Finland, 7 p.m.
Tuesday, Nov. 8: Canada Black vs. USA, 7 p.m.
Wednesday, Nov. 9: Finland vs. Canada Red, 7 p.m.
Friday, Nov. 11: Canada Red vs. Sweden, 7 p.m.
Tickets for the Sungod games are $15 and can be purchased in advanced here.
Langley and Delta will receive the net proceeds from all ticket sales as a legacy of the event to support grassroots hockey within the communities. Additionally, recent editions of the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge have resulted in as much as $6 million in economic impact within the host communities.
More than 1,800 NHL draft picks have suited up since the inception of the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge (previously known as the Quebec Esso Cup) in 1986, including 16 first-overall draft picks since 2001 (Ilya Kovalchuk, 2001; Rick Nash, 2002; Marc-André Fleury, 2003; Alexander Ovechkin, 2004; Erik Johnson, 2006; Patrick Kane, 2007; John Tavares, 2009; Taylor Hall, 2010, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, 2011; Nathan MacKinnon, 2013; Aaron Ekblad, 2014; Connor McDavid, 2015; Auston Matthews, 2016; Jack Hughes, 2019; Alexis Lafrenière, 2020; Owen Power, 2021).
