Although Latvians show their best, Swedes stay undefeated

Team Sweden collected their ninth point in Group B by beating 3-1 Latvians and they advanced to playoffs. However, they want more.

The game was opened by a minor penalty to Team Sweden, but the Latvians didn´t convert it into tonight´s first goal. The Swedes had a great opportunity in the 15th minute during a five-minute power play. However, captain Filip Forsberg hit the post from the left wing. Team Latvia was an equal opponent to the favoured Swedes but their opportunities were stopped often because of meticulous defensive work by the Swedish players.

“We are happy that we won the third game but our job here isn´t finished. We want to collect the fourth victory and avoid the quarterfinals. Every time there is something to improve and I think that we have to be more active and shoot more often,” was how Forsberg described his team´s goals for the next game.

Team Sweden proved its quality and out-shot its opponent. In the 26th minute, the active Swedish game was awarded with a goal. Good passing by Filip Sandberg was taken advantage of by Mattias Kalin. The Swedes could have taken a two-goal lead but the video goal judge didn´t confirm the goal, so the score was still 1-0 for Team Sweden after 40 minutes.

The third period started with a great moment for the Latvians. Ricard Kondrats tied the score with a shot under the crossbar on two-on-one break. However, the score didn´t remain tied for long. Only 101 seconds later, Elias Lindholm beat Ivars Punnenvos for the second time and set his total number for the tournament to 4 goals. The Latvians didn´t give up, though, and tried hard theh rest of the game. They were very close but they couldn´t finish off any of their chances during a two-minute penalty to Erik Karlsson. At 59:25, Elias Lindholm insured the Swedish victory by scoring into the empty Latvian net.

"We were a good opponent for the Swedes mostly during the first period because we studied their game style on video. After that we were a bit tired and maybe we stopped following our instructions," Ricards Kondrats said after the game.