It’s been a long road for Kazakhstan’s under-20 program over the past 10 years. In the IIHF’s Top Division for the World Junior Hockey Championships in 2008 and 2009, they struggled to even make the second tier of nations in the first part of this decade, finally snapping a three-year streak of finishing as the runner-up in 2015 to get back into the group that competes for a place in the main tournament.
It took two nail-biting contests at the beginning of last year’s Division IA schedule to get them here. They defeated eventual third-place finisher Germany in overtime in the first game of the event, and needed a shootout to get by Latvia in their second contest.