In the Thursday evening matches of the World Cup, Germany defeated Denmark and Switzerland defeated Slovakia.
In Group B of the men’s ice hockey World Cup in Riga, Latvia, Switzerland, which went from win to win, continued its full point pot game with a 4-2 win over Slovakia in a late Thursday match. In the evening game of Group A played in Tampere, Germany beat Denmark 6-4 to open their account of victory and points.
Switzerland lost their first three games of the Games without scoring a goal. Switzerland recorded their national team record for keeping a clean sheet for more than 205 minutes, with Slovakia’s Andrej Kudrna breaking the streak in the second period of the evening’s match with a 1–2 deficit.
Pavol Regenda brought Slovakia even in the last minute of the second period, but in the third period Christian Martí scored the winning goal for Switzerland, 3–2. Switzerland leads the group with one point for Canada and two for the Czech Republic, who beat Slovenia 6-2 in Thursday’s day game. Group hosts Latvia are fourth with five points, with Slovakia and Norway one point behind Latvia.
Germany, who had opened the tournament with three losses, desperately needed a win against Denmark, who went through the tournament undefeated, but Denmark took the lead in the opening set with a hit from Mattias Lassen. However, in the second period, Germany scored three goals in less than nine minutes, but Denmark continued to struggle to find a goal late in the period, and Christian Wagen equalized five minutes before the end of the third period. .
Jonas Müller’s 4–3 goal, followed by Wedges’ equalizer 20 seconds later, and Marcel Knoebels’ 5–3 shot in the air, again put the Germans far behind. Wedges put it low, but Nico Sturm slotted into an empty Danish goal to seal the vital points for Germany.
The Tampere group is led by the United States, with 12 points after four rounds, with Sweden one point away. Denmark has eight points, Finland has seven and next are France with four and Germany with three. Hungary (2 points) and Austria (1 point) are close behind.
The group continues on Friday with Hungary-Finland and Austria-Germany matches.
