The German hockey team is the second semi-finalist of the world championship of the elite group in Finland and Latvia. In Riga, the Germans beat Switzerland 3:1 (1:0, 2:1, 0:0).
Switzerland, which played excellently in the first part of the World Cup and strung up victory after victory – it eliminated Slovenia 7:0 in the opening round – and suffered its first defeat only in the last round, remains without a fight for medals. She was eliminated from it by the fighting Germans, who had a bad start to the competition and for a long time trembled for the elimination fights, but today they showed their best performance in a hard and nervous match and made it to the semi-finals. The Germans hope to build on it with their first medal since the distant year of 1953, when they won silver.
They laid the foundation for the victory with a good defensive game, even though they played without their best defender Moritz Seider from the 32nd minute, who received a match penalty for a deliberate hit on a rival.
However, neither his absence nor the five-minute penalty for this offense was used by Switzerland, the Germans endured this period, and immediately after that, when the forces were equal on the ice, they took the lead again, John Peterka scored.
The period in the last minutes of the second period was the key to the unfolding of the semi-final. After the German goal for 2:1, the Swiss had another numerical advantage, but instead of equalizing, they experienced a cold shower, as Nico Strum escaped on the counterattack and scored for 3:1.
The last third was spent in the superiority of the Swiss, but it remained unused. The fighting Germans, led by goalkeeper Mathias Niederberger, did not slouch anymore, so Germany looked forward to a great success.
In the first match today, the American national team defeated the Czech Republic 3:0. In the evening match, the hockey team of Latvia was the last to reach the semi-finals of the world championship of the elite group, after defeating Sweden in the quarter-finals with 3:1 (1:0, 0:1, 2:0) in Riga. Even before that, the Canadians beat the world champions Finns 4:1.
In the system, where in the semi-finals the highest-ranked team after regular time competes with the worst of the four, this is how the semi-final pairs Canada – Latvia and the USA – Germany were formed.
Tags: USA Germany semifinalists
