USA beats Switzerland 5-2 and will meet Finland again

Switzerland came to this meeting without four regular players who were all injured. Despite that they played their stylish way all the way to the end. Switzerland was on of the the most elegant, modern and fast playing team in this years tournament but they just couldn't score enough to win and also there are still some weaknesses in defensive play.

Ivo Rüthemann opened the scoring after 21 seconds into the second period. That some kind of woke up USA and they equalized after couple of minutes by Bobby Ryan and Cam Fowler brought USA ahead from a nice pass by Paul Stastny with three minutes left in the period.

In the third period USA didn't left space for any speculation and scored three more goals by Stastny, Alex Goligoski and Jeff Petry before Swiss got one more consolation goal by Morris Traschler.

"It was certainly not good tournament from us" commented Swiss captain New York Islander Mark Streit after the game. "We are missing the stability and we keep doing easy mistakes. You can maybe do that in Swiss league but not in an international tournament".

Switzerland landed finally on the 11th place and that is the worst place since 1998 when they qualified to the A group. They still got some positive news even with that placement. Switzerland qualified as a ninth and last team directly to Sochi Olympics 2014 and avoided the qualification tournament. This is based on IIHF world ranking and not only this years tournament. Also there has to be mentioned one name from Swiss team: Damien Brunner. This fast and skillful player will be target for several NHL teams for the next season.

Finnish fans maybe hoped for a Swiss win which would have brought Slovakia against Finland in quarters and that would have been certainly better option than USA or Canada. On the other hand if you want to go to the end you have to be ready for everybody.

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