IIHF U18 World Championship Preview
Czechia is not the feel-good underdog anymore. This is a legitimate youth program now, and the team is walking into the 2026 IIHF Women’s U18 World Championship with something that used to feel unthinkable: expectations.
Silver in 2024. Bronze in 2025. And now they arrive at the 2026 tournament trying to make it three straight medals. That alone tells you what you need to know about the trajectory of Czech women’s hockey at the youth level. And the test starts immediately. Czechia opens the tournament on January 10th, and Group B is tough: Finland, the USA, and Slovakia. You’re either ready or you’re in trouble.
What makes this year’s Czech roster especially fascinating is that it feels like a handoff between eras. The last two medal teams had very clear headline anchors. In 2024, Czechia’s silver run had true marquee names: Adéla Šapovalivová (University of Wisconsin) was the tournament’s top forward, and Aneta Šenková (Clarkson University) was top goalkeeper. In 2025, when Czechia grabbed bronze, they leaned on an older class again, including goaltender Daniela Nováková and Linda Vocetková (Djurgårdens - SDHL), and a big chunk of those 2007-born contributors are now gone from that medal roster too.
So the big question becomes simple, and it’s the question that matters in every transition year for a rising program: how does Czechia remain competitive?
The Forward Core
The Hockey News already flagged Julie Jeboušková as the player to watch, and that’s fair. She’s at Shattuck-St. Mary’s (one of the best youth programs in all of North America), and she’s producing: 52 points in 29 games this season. She’s also a UMaine commit, which, as a Black Bears guy… I love. But the roster around her is what can change the team’s ceiling. So let’s talk about the rest of the roster, and the main things I’ll be watching.
Start with Adéla Mynaříková. The numbers are solid: 45 points in 14 games in Czechia’s top women’s league. And yes, it’s worth being honest about context. That league isn’t the SDHL, and it isn’t the Swiss league. The level and depth aren’t comparable. But production like that at her age, is still a proof point. Dominating your environment is often the first sign you’re ready to survive a tougher one.
Then we have the North America pipeline, and Czechia has been betting hard on this for a few years now. This is one of the most important long-term developments in the program: Czech girls living in the smaller-ice, high-tempo environment, playing a style where decisions have to happen faster.. Adéla Pánková is a great example of this. With Pittsburgh Penguins Elite 19U, she’s got 9 goals in 24 games so far and the bigger point isn’t the raw total, but her consistent play and hustle. Tereza Gildainová at Lovell Academy is another one I’m circling for that same reason. Players in that environment tend to look like they’ve already lived through the kind of frantic shift sequences you get at U18 Worlds, especially against top nations.
I’m really eager to see who the ‘non-headline’ forward group is going to be, and who might step up to provide the offense. Jeboušková is the obvious choice, but there are some candidates like those above I think could really help win forecheck, draw penalties, and tip the scale in Czechia’s favor.
The Defensive Core
If Czechia has real depth scoring, and not just one line doing everything, it changes everything about their tournament. It changes how coaches can roll lines. It changes fatigue. It changes how you handle a short turnaround between big games. It changes whether you have legs when you hit the quarterfinal and beyond.
Then there’s the defensive corps and honestly, this might be the actual story of Czechia’s tournament. On the back end, Ellen Jarabková is a massive returning piece. She’s one of those players who decides whether Czechia plays offense… or spends entire shifts trapped. If Czechia’s breakouts are clean, they can play with anybody. If not, they’ll spend entire shifts stuck, and it won’t matter what your forwards can do because they won’t have the puck.
And then there’s Klára Šrámková, who is genuinely fascinating. She’s a very young 15-year old with a bunch of upside already. She’s already played in Czech women’s national team games this season which points to the national program seeing something unique about her, because those kinds of call ups don’t just happen at 15. And the little bit we saw of her on the senior side was actually……pretty good. She's the absolute pride of České Budějovice’s program, and she’s looked really good all season. I am very eager to see her play against the best of her peers in this tournament.
And we still have the North America-developed defenders either: Šarlota Stýblová and Johanna Tischler at Ontario Hockey Academy, plus Aneta Paroubková and Ema Šťástková at Purcell Hockey Academy. Again, the common thread here isn’t “they’re in North America therefore they’re better.” It’s that they have experience with pace in retrievals, pace in reads, pace in puck movement and those are the tools you need when you’re trying to survive shifts against Finland and the U.S.
Goaltending
Finally: goaltending. Last year Czechia had a workhorse in Nováková, and now it’s a new chapter. I’ll be honest, I’m not super familiar with this trio yet, but here’s what stands out. Lili (Chmelařová) put up a .916 at the U16 level. Anna Horáková is 17, has been playing in Austria the last few years, and was on the U18 team last season. I expect she’ll get most of the minutes, with Ortová also getting a chance, another 17-year-old, depending on how group play goes.
The goaltending question from me is the same as in years prior: “Can you hold the line when the game gets chaotic? Can you survive netfront scrambles? Can you control rebounds when the USA starts living in your crease? Can you make the second save, not just the first one, when everything breaks down? Time will tell…
Final Thoughts
The whole thesis of Czechia’s tournament for me is that they’ve already proven they can get to the podium. Now they have to prove they can reload and do it again. If the breakouts are clean, if the depth can survive and contribute, and if the goaltending can handle chaos without panic, Czechia can absolutely make another run.
And if they do? It’s another signal to the rest of the world that Czech women’s hockey is starting to expect results, perennially, and they aren’t going away….
