STOCKHOLM – Even though World Championship rosters look quite different from year to year for the top nations, there is always pressure on the defending champions, regardless of which players they’re using.

Now Finland, which crushed 2012 co-host Sweden 6-1 in last year’s final, is facing the classic question: “What do you do for an encore?”

To get a sense of how things are likely to shake out for Jukka Jalonen’s men, let’s take a look back at what’s transpired over the past 20 years. This is a reasonable sample set, since 1992 marked the first year that the IIHF used a full playoff system rather than round robins.

The following list indicates where the defending champions finished the following year at the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship. For example, the Czech Republic came first in 2005, so the list says “2006: Czech Republic, second” (i.e. the Czechs won silver in Riga 2006).

1992: Sweden, first
1993: Sweden, second
1994: Russia, fifth
1995: Canada, third
1996: Finland, fifth
1997: Czech Republic, third
1998: Canada, sixth
1999: Sweden, third
2000: Czech Republic, first
2001: Czech Republic, first
2002: Czech Republic, fifth
2003: Slovakia, third
2004: Canada, first
2005: Canada, second
2006: Czech Republic, second
2007: Sweden, fourth
2008: Canada, second
2009: Russia, first
2010: Russia, second
2011: Czech Republic, third

What can we learn from these results?

First, the average placement for a gold medal-winning team in the following tournament is 2.75. In other words, based on history, roughly a non-gold medal is what you should expect to earn. A silver encore has occurred five times in the last 20 years (1993, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010), and there have also been five bronze encores (1995, 1997, 1999, 2003, 2011). Only four times has a defending champion failed to medal at all the next time (1996, 1998, 2002, 2007).

Second, out of the six individual national teams that have won world titles in the last 20 years, the Czechs and Swedes have done the most consistent job of bouncing back the following year on average. The highs and lows have been a bit more pronounced for Canada and Russia. Slovakia and Finland, meanwhile, have only one world title apiece in the time frame we’re examining, which needs to be borne in mind when assessing their numbers.

Czech Republic = 2.5
Sweden =  2.5
Russia =  2.66
Canada = 2.8
Slovakia = 3
Finland = 5

Third, it seems like championship teams are becoming more likely to follow up with respectable results nowadays than in the past. During the 20th-century portion of our survey (1992-1999), the average placement for a defending champion was 3.5. In the new millennium (2000-2011), it’s shot up to 2.25.

So overall, it appears reasonable to project that the Finns will not repeat as champions in 2012, but will very likely win silver or bronze. (And that would be a big improvement on what happened the last time the tournament was staged in Helsinki: Finland was leading archrival Sweden 5-1 at Hartwall Arena in the 2003 quarter-finals, but collapsed and gave Tre Kronor a 6-5 victory.)

Of course, what remains to be seen is how the dreaded “home ice curse” factor affects Finland’s bounce-back ability. No host team has won the Worlds since the Soviet Union in 1986.

In the 20-year period we’ve just covered, only once has a defending champion attempted to repeat on home ice. Canada, which won nine straight games en route to gold in Russia 2007, finished second in 2008 in Quebec City when Ilya Kovalchuk scored for Russia in overtime in the final. But it's hard to ascertain much about Finland's imminent outcome from that lone example. Stay tuned.

LUCAS AYKROYD