The historic feat of Swiss hockey players - Sport

The historic feat of Swiss hockey players – Sport

Posted On: May 17, 2023

Switzerland beat Kazakhstan in the evening’s Group B match as expected. Patrick Fischer’s men won 5-0 with five different scorers in their squad.

Quarterbacks Fabrice Herzog and Damien Riat each scored a goal and an assist, defender Tobias Geisser scored the winning goal, followed by fellow defender Romain Loeffel and captain Nino Niederreiter.

After Loeffel’s goal in the 51st minute, Andrei Shutov came out of the Kazakh goal and left 5 of 30 shots. His replacement, Nikita Bojarkin, only had to step in once, and he did it successfully. The Swiss Leonardo Genoni, on the other hand, kept a “clean sheet”.

The EV Zug keeper only needed 13 saves as the team, affectionately called ‘Nati’ by Swiss fans, had a 36-13 advantage on shots on target. Today, in the entire match, his players did not receive any penalties.

After three appearances at this year’s World Cup, Switzerland lead the group with nine points and have yet to concede a goal. This is his first tournament since 1939 started with three “clean sheets”. 84 years ago, in front of their home crowd, they won successively: 12:0 with Latvia, 23:0 (!) with Yugoslavia and 1:0 with Czechoslovakia. Now there is no such spectacular goal balance, but after 3 games it is still 15:0.

Interestingly, in 1939, in match number 4 of the World Cup, in the second group stage, the Swiss hit Poland and continued their “dry” streak, because they beat the “White-Reds” 4:0.

This time they can only meet Poland in a year, but in the 4th game in Riga they will face Slovakia on Thursday. This match should launch a series of serious tests of the Swiss defense and goalkeepers, because so far they have kept their “clean sheet” in meetings with Slovenia, Norway and Kazakhstan.

The match against Slovakia will kick off the series, the next stages of which will be matches against Canada and the Czech Republic. And at the end of the group stage, Fischer’s team will face Latvia. For their part, the Kazakhs will face another very tough challenge tomorrow as they face Canada.

Switzerland – Kazakhstan 5-0 (1-0, 2-0, 2-0) Geisser (5th), Herzog (28th), Riat (31st), Niederreiter (41st), Loeffel (50th)

Group B table:

Place	Crew	matches	Goals	Points
1.	Swiss	3	15-0	9
2.	Canada	3	13-3	8
3.	The Czech Republic	3	11-7	7
4.	Slovakia	3	5-6	4
5.	Norway	3	4-7	4
6.	Latvia	3	5-11	2
7.	Kazakhstan	3	5-13	2
8.	Slovenia	3	2-13	0

Wednesday:

Latvia – Norway Canada – Kazakhstan

In Tampere, the newly promoted Hungarian side won their first tournament by beating France 3-2 after extra time. In the first two periods, the Hungarians made up for losses twice, and in the extra part of the game, István Bartalis gave them the victory.

Before him, the goals of the “Magyars” were scored by the players of the “top five”: defender Bence Stipsicz and striker Vilmos Galló. Stipsich redeemed himself for the penalty with a goal, after which Charles Bertrand scored France’s first goal with the advantage. The Hungarian defender landed in the penalty box three times today but only the first suspension resulted in a goal.

Between the positions of the Hungarian team, an important figure was Jastrzębie Bence Bálizs, who last season played in JKH GKS, who saved 26 of 28 “Les Bleus” shots.

This is only the second victory of the Hungarians at the World Championships in the highest category after the Second World War. In 2016, they managed to beat Belarus, but that didn’t protect them from relegation from the top flight. Now they would like it to be different. Today’s victory allowed them to move up to 6th place in Group A. In turn, the French, despite the defeat, thanks to the point gained, move up to 4th place, ahead of the Finns with the same number of points. The two teams will meet tomorrow night.

France – Hungary 2-3 (1-1, 1-1, 0-0, 0-1) Bertrand (17th), Boudon (30th) — Stipsich (20th), Galló (34th), Bartalis (62nd)

Table of Group A: