A best-of-three qualification will be played between the bottom-ranked team of the 2014 Olympic women’s ice hockey tournament and the Division I winner to determine the last team to join the 2015 IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship.

This season will have the top women’s hockey nations participating in the Olympic Winter Games while the other nations play out the lower divisions for the first time ever in an Olympic year. The teams at the Olympics correspond with the top-eight nations in the IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship program, because Japan won last year’s Division I Group A as well as one of the two Final Olympic Qualification events.

Because the IIHF Statutes & Bylaws don’t specifically outline a promotion/relegation mode for the Women’s World Championship Program during an Olympic year and following the discussions at the 2013 IIHF Semi-Annual Congress, the IIHF Council in co-operation with the IIHF Competition Committee clarified the promotion/relegation rules of this year’s events in view of the 2015 IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship.

The IIHF Council approved the following promotion/relegation mode between the top-two levels of the IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship:

• A best-of-three qualification series will be played between the eighth-ranked team of the 2014 Olympic women’s ice hockey tournament and the winner of the 2014 IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship Division I Group A.
• The best-of-three qualification event shall be hosted by the better-ranked team according to the 2014 IIHF Women’s World Ranking established immediately after the 2014 Olympics, to be completed no later than 15th November 2014.
• The winner of this best-of-three series will qualify for promotion to the 2015 IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship in Malmö, Sweden, as the eighth-seeded team while the loser will play in the 2015 IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship Division I Group A as the top-seeded team.
• Sweden as the host of the 2015 IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championship cannot be relegated. Should Sweden finish in eighth position at the 2014 Olympic women’s ice hockey tournament, then the seventh-placed team would be assigned to play in the qualification series instead.