Before the 2013 IIHF World Championships we discussed Sweden, Finland, Canada and the the other ‘Big Six’ nations as well as the last year’s sliver medal winners Slovakia. Even France and Germany had a mention after their strong challenges last year but one nation received little focus; Switzerland. That, in hindsight, makes us look a [...]
In our Helsinki and Stockholm previews we predicted the top four in both which has been fairly accurate. But, whilst we await to see if Czech Republic assist us to 100% accuracy by scoring an unlikely win over Canada that high percentile, like all statistics, would be rather disingenuous. Although the teams that make it past the [...]
Thursday 9 May saw one of the biggest surprises in world hockey for many a year as the French national team edged unbeaten defending Champions Russia 2-1 in Helsinki. We mentioned yesterday that this group, unlike the Stockholm ensemble, was going as would be expected with Zinetula Bilyaletdinov’s men winning all three games of their campaign [...]
Over in the Stockholm Group Switzerland have been surprising everybody on their way to the top. In Helsinki things are going more predictably with Russia topping the group with a 3-0 record; all of which have come in regular time. Their campaign did not begin until Day Two though with the opening fixture of the IIHF World [...]
We are a day away from being exactly half way through the Preliminary Round of the 2013 IIHF World Championships and both the Helsinki and Stockholm Groups are taking shape, one more surprisingly than the other. We mentioned in our Stockholm Preview that the hosts would be hoping to get off to a strong start but that ultimately [...]
