Selection Bias Index · IIHF U18 2026

The team the model would have picked.

Bratislava just ended. Sweden won gold. The most surprising line in the box scores: Latvia 5, USA 2 in the quarterfinal.

The team with the biggest gap between its actual roster and an algorithmic top-N pick (USA, at 68%) was eliminated by a team with one of the smallest gaps (Latvia, at 36%) — playing without its highest-rated forward by ProdigyPoints, Olivers Murnieks (Saint John Sea Dogs, QMJHL).

That isn't a story we wrote. It's a result line on the IIHF schedule. This article shows you the data underneath it — country by country, side by side, no interpretation. The reader gets to decide what it means.

Published 2026-05-04 ~12 min read 248 / 249 roster spots matched
Selection Bias Index by country, IIHF U18 2026

How we did it

  1. Pulled the actual roster of every team at the IIHF World U18 Championship 2026 via the Elite Prospects API.
  2. For each country, counted the slots by position (e.g. Sweden: 13 F / 8 D / 3 G).
  3. Ran a query against our database (191,000 hockey players, each with a single composite metric — ProdigyPoints — that rolls up performance, level played, visibility, physical attributes, achievements, and trending momentum) returning the top-N players by ProdigyPoints for that nationality and position, where birth year ∈ {2008, 2009} and gender = male.
  4. Compared the two lists. Computed % of slots that diverged.

We're calling the divergence the Selection Bias Index (SBI). Coverage was 99.6% — 248 of 249 rostered players matched cleanly to a player in our database via Elite Prospects ID. Six rostered players were born in 2010 (recent call-ups outside our cohort scope) and count as divergences.

The summary

CountrySlotsDivergedSBI
🇺🇸 USA251768.0%
🇨🇿 Czechia251248.0%
🇨🇦 Canada251248.0%
🇸🇰 Slovakia251144.0%
🇩🇪 Germany251040.0%
🇱🇻 Latvia25936.0%
🇫🇮 Finland25936.0%
🇸🇪 Sweden24833.3%
🇩🇰 Denmark25832.0%
🇳🇴 Norway25728.0%

How they actually finished

SBI vs tournament finish, IIHF U18 2026
Tournament finishCountrySBI
🥇 Gold🇸🇪 Sweden33.3%
🥈 Silver🇸🇰 Slovakia44.0%
🥉 Bronze🇨🇿 Czechia48.0%
4th🇱🇻 Latvia36.0%
QF — eliminated🇺🇸 USA68.0%
QF — eliminated🇨🇦 Canada48.0%
QF — eliminated🇫🇮 Finland36.0%
QF — eliminated🇩🇪 Germany40.0%
QF — eliminated🇳🇴 Norway28.0%
Group out🇩🇰 Denmark32.0%

Both QF "high-SBI vs low-SBI" matchups (USA-LAT, CAN-SWE) were won by the lower-SBI team. The eventual gold medalist (Sweden) had the third-lowest SBI in the tournament. The honest counter-pattern: Slovakia (silver) had a higher SBI than Latvia and Sweden — host effect plays a role, the data doesn't deny it. Czechia (bronze) at 48% SBI also performed above what the SBI alone would predict.

We are not asserting causality. We are showing you the table.

The team that wasn't picked

ProdigyPoints All-Stars — model #1 per country who did not play Bratislava 2026
Click to view profile → Pierce Mbuyi Viggo Björck Will McLaughlin Olivers Murnieks Lukas Kachlir Maximilian Leister

Six players who were the model's #1 in their country and position, none of whom appeared on a Bratislava 2026 roster.

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  • Team USA spotlight — all 14 actual roster forwards vs all 14 the model picked, side by side
  • 10 country breakdowns — 250 players, every name, every team, every ProdigyPoints score
  • The unselected #1s in detail — Mbuyi, Björck, McLaughlin, Murnieks, Kachlir, Leister
  • Methodology caveats — what the model can't see, and what the next U20 WJC report will fix

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