Faceoff Factor

With today’s 2-1 win over Belarus, Switzerland moves on the Qualifying round for the 11th consecutive year.

Sprunger scored the first Swiss goal in the first period. Koltsov tied the game midway through the second period, but Sprunger scored again just minutes later.

Belarus came into today’s game after adding four NHL players to its roster: Ruslan Salei, the Kostitsyn brothers, and Mikhail Grabovsky. Despite this move, none of these players had much of an impact on the game. Perhaps they need a couple of days to settle in with their new team.

The Finns were expected to win this game, but the Norwegians played a spectacular game and didn’t make it easy for Finland.

Finland scored their first goal on their first shot of the game while on the power play (J. Jokinen), but Ask tied the game with a great wrist shot. Peltonen put Finland back in the lead with a power play goal, but Bastiansen tied the score again while Norway was on a 5-on-3 power play – all in the first period of play. The teams traded chances for the remaining two periods but the game went into overtime, where Ruutu scored the game winner.

Note: Finland’s roster will get a boost for Wednesday’s game against Slovakia, as Saku Koivu is joining the team.

Sweden ended today’s game with a convincing win over France just two days after narrowly beating Belarus.

Both coaches made changes to their rosters before the game, most notably a change in net: Stefan Liv replaced Mikael Tellqvist for Sweden, and Cristobal Huet was rested in favour of Fabrice Lhenry.

The first period was scoreless, despite the fact that the referees called 5 penalties. Things changed in the second period, however, when Sweden finally capitalized (Martensson) just after France killed a 4-on-3 penalty. The French kept taking penalties and Sweden got on a roll, scoring on their 7th power play of the game (Hornqvist). Weinhandl and Wallin scored before the end of the second. Backstrom, Edler, and Nilsson scored in the third period before Lhenry was pulled in favour of Huet, but it didn’t make much difference as Jonsson and Backstrom scored late.

Germany took a 2-0 lead in the first period thanks to a couple of power play goals (Sturm, Ustorf). They kept up their dominant play in the second period, despite yielding a power play goal (Ciernik). Hackert restored Germany’s two-goal lead late in the second period, and they frustrated the Slovaks in the third. Hackert added Germany’s fourth goal just moments after they had a goal disallowed because a player was in the crease. Kolnik scored a meaningless goal with seconds left in the game.

Note: Game recaps, stats and standings will not be updated on May 6th and 7th.