IIHF World Championships Roundup: USA Continue Perfect Start, Latvia Score Win

The group stages continued on Wednesday with every nation having played three matches at the World Championships. The undefeated USA kept up their good start with a win over Austria and co-hosts Latvia beat Norway to start the day off.

Flashscore brings you all the day’s results from Tampere and Riga.

Group A

USA 4 Austria 1

Aside from Group B’s Switzerland, the USA were the only other team to record three regular-time wins from their opening three matches at this World Championships. Austria, meanwhile, had just one point – gained via an overtime loss to France – from their first three outings.

The writing was thus somewhat on the wall when these two met in Tampere during Wednesday’s early game and there were few surprised when the USA ran out 4-1 winners.

After a scoreless opening period, Rocco Grimaldi got the US going before Thomas Raffl pulled one back for the underdog Austrians. Later, Carter Mazur made it 2-1 before the second break.

In the third, Lane Hutson and Nick Perbix put the icing on the cake for the USA.

Latvia 2 Norway 1

Co-hosts Latvia were boosted by a surprise overtime win against the Czech Republic on Monday after starting the tournament with losses to Canada and Slovakia. Norway, on the other hand, snatched a first regular-time win over Slovenia on Tuesday to bring their own momentum into this Group B match in Riga.

It proved to be a close encounter and after a goalless first period, it exploded into action with the Latvians scoring two quickfire goals to race into a 2-0 lead. Rodrigo Abols and Toms Andersons got on the scoresheet for the home side.

Ludvig Hoff managed to grab a goal for the Norwegians but they couldn’t add another and that’s how it ended. Latvia edged into the quarter-final places, at least temporarily, with the win.