The German national ice hockey team celebrated their fifth win in a row at the World Championships in Finland and Latvia. After three narrow defeats at the start and then four victories in the group stage, coach Harold Kreis’ team came to a 3-1 (1-0; 2-1; 0-0) win over Switzerland in the quarter-finals in Riga. The team surprisingly made it into the World Cup semi-finals for the third time in the history of the association.
“We played really well, defended really well. It can go on like this,” said Captain Moritz Müller. The favored Confederates had finished first in group B with six wins from seven games. Germany finished fourth in Group A behind the USA, Sweden and Finland.
The DEB team laid the foundation for their deserved advance towards the end of the second third when John-Jason Peterka (38th) and Nico Sturm (39th) scored within 36 seconds to make it 2-1 and 3-1.
Maximilian Kastner had previously managed to make it 1-0 (7th), Jonas Siegenthaler had equalized for Switzerland at the beginning of the second period (21st).
In 2021, also in Riga and at the home World Cup in 2010, the selection of the German Ice Hockey Federation (DEB) prevailed against Switzerland in the quarter-finals of the World Cup. The tournaments then ended in fourth place.
In the semifinals on Saturday at 1.20 p.m. in Tampere, Finland, the team will meet the USA (Sport1 and Magenta Sport live), who beat the Czech Republic 3-0. In the group phase, the district team had lost 2:3 against the Americans. But now it should finally work with the first German World Cup medal since 1953.
