IIHF World Championships Update: Great Britain, Great Comeback

Image credit: HHOF-IIHF IMAGES

Due to the structure of the IIHF World Championships, fans often have to endure several high-scoring, non competitive games during the first round of the tournament. This year in Slovakia has been no exception as there were some monumental beat downs along the way.

There were a couple of nail biting contests to get the fans’ pulses racing though and these came courtesy of the head-to-head relegation battles in both Group A and B. The winners would remain in the tournament next season while the losers would go down to Division 1 Group A and have to work their way back up to the event, taking at least two years.

First up was the France vs Great Britain showdown in Group A. France had been a regular in the top tier since 2008 while Britain was making their first appearance since 1994, hoping to return next year for their first back-to-back appearance since 1950/51. The French entered their final game with one point, which was earned in a shootout loss to Denmark. They owned seventh place in the eight-team group and had been outscored 30-11. Great Britain, ranked 22^nd in the world, hadn’t managed a point with six straight defeats in which they were outscored 38-5.

The French got off to a flying start and held a 3-0 lead midway through the contest with the second and third goals coming in a span of just six seconds. British head coach Peter Russell wisely called a timeout after the third goal to try and settle his squad down. Still, the British hadn’t scored four goals in a game in the tournament since 1962 or won a game since then so a comeback looked quite improbable.

Robert Dowd put the British on the board at 14:59 of the second period and Mike Hammond made it 3-2 just three minutes later. Robert Farmer tied the game at 5:16 of the third but it looked like all of Britain’s hard work would be for naught when they took a penalty with just 4:06 remaining in the game. This didn’t bode well for a team which had allowed 12 goals against on their previous 22 penalty-killing tasks. They managed to kill it off though and take the game to three-on-three overtime.

France had several excellent opportunities to end it in the extra session but Britain’s goaltender Ben Bowns made five incredible saves during two mad scrambles around his net to keep the underdogs in it. Ben Davies took advantage of the situation and netted the winner for Great Britain at 2:03 of overtime to complete the comeback and keep the nation in the top pool for next year’s tournament in Switzerland.

The British have had a flare for the dramatic over the past year as they came back from a 2-0 deficit against Hungary in Budapest last year. After Bowns saved a penalty shot with the game at 2-1, Farmer scored with 15.8 seconds remaining in the contest to give the Brits a 2-2 tie and they won it in a shootout to earn at spot at this year’s World Championships.

The Group B relegation clash between Italy and Austria was almost as dramatic. Both teams entered their final game having lost all six previous contests. Italy had been outscored 45-1 while the Austrians had been outgunned 36-6. Austria was attempting to remain in the top pool for the third straight year while Italy was hoping to remain there for the first time since 2008.

Italy took the lead in the first period only to see Austria tie it up 86 seconds later and then go ahead 2-1 with just over three minutes left in the first. The Italians scored twice in the second frame to regain the lead midway through it. They couldn’t build on it though as Austria stormed out of the gate in the third period to tie the game 3-3 at the 1:45 mark.

This encounter would also go to overtime but nothing was settled even though Austria outshot Italy 6-2 in the extra session and 41-22 after 65 minutes. A shootout was needed to decide who would stay up with defenseman Sean McMonagle scoring the winner for Italy in the seventh round of shots after each team had scored two goals.

The rest of the preliminary round didn’t really produce any major surprises with the usual suspects progressing to the quarterfinals. Canada topped Group A due to their 3-0 win over the USA in their final game. This meant Finland placed second, Germany third and the USA fourth. Slovakia finished fifth, Denmark sixth, Great Britain seventh and France eighth and all missed the playoffs.

Russia smoked Sweden 7-4 in their final contest to win Group B with the Czech Republic finishing second, Sweden third and Switzerland fourth. Teams in Group B missing the playoffs were fifth-place Latvia, followed by Norway, Italy and Austria. Austria and France were both relegated from the tournament and will be replaced by Belarus and Kazakhstan next year.

The quarterfinals will be played on May 23^rd with Russia meeting the USA and the Czech Republic taking on Germany in Bratislava. Canada will face off against Switzerland and Finland will renew their rivalry with Sweden in Kosice. The semifinals take place on May 25^th with the matchups being decided on the seeding. The top seeded quarterfinal winner will square off with the bottom seeded winner etc. The final is then set for May 26rh.

Heading into the playoff round Russia is seeded first followed by Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden, Germany, USA and Switzerland.

The individual scoring race was predictably dominated by NHL players in the first round. William Nylander (Toronto Maple Leafs and Sweden) led with way with five goals and 17 points followed by Nikita Kucherov (Tampa Bay Lightning and Russia) with six goals and 15 points, Jakub Voracek (Philadelphia Flyers and Czech Republic) with three goals and 15 points, Michael Frolik (Calgary Flames and Czech Republic) seven goals and 14 points, Anthony Mantha (Detroit Red Wings and Canada) with seven goals and 12 points and Nikita Gusev (Vegas Golden Knights and Russia) with three goals and 12 points.

As far as goaltending goes, Carter Hart (Philadelphia and Canada) led the way with a 0.70 goals-against average followed by Andrei Vasilevskiy (Tampa and Russia) at 1.40, Kevin Lankinen (Rockford IceHogs and Finland) at 1.40 and (Leonardo Genoni (EV Zug and Switzerland) at 1.70.