Italy celebrates overtime win against Denmark

"I'm very disappointed," Denmark's Swedish coach Per Bäckman said after the game. "We didn't play as good as we did against the Czech Republic. We made too many individual mistakes."

As expected, Denmark took control of the game from the start and had almost all of the puck possession. Thus, it was a big shock for Denmark when Italy scored two goals within 18 seconds. First, Luca Ansoldi scored with a soft backhand shot after the puck had come to him after some lucky bounces. And almost immediately after the ensuing faceoff, Italy set up a nice attack where defenceman Matt de Marchi beat Frederik Andersen with a hard slap shot.

Denmark scored an important goal to cut the deficit to 1 after just 14 seconds of play in the second period. Frans Nielsen made a nice drop pass behind his back and Lars Eller fired it home. A few minutes later, Jesper Jensen tied the game on a good Danish power play. A shot by Morten Green was saved by Bellissimo, but left Jensen with an open net on the rebound.

Jensen would also be the man that gave Denmark the lead when he made it 3-2 after a giveway by the Italian defence. Jensen raced all alone against Bellissimo, who tried to dive for the puck, but Jensen easily deked him for another open net finish. De Marchi was the second player of the game to score two goals when a beautiful pass by Giulio Scandella left him with an open net to score on at the far post.

If de Marchi was pleased after the game and said "it was a great game", Jensen was very disappointed. 

"We gave up to easy goals. I don't think we took them to lightly, we dominated the game," he said.

The third period was even, with chances at both end but no goals were scored and the game went to overtime. There, it only took 52 seconds for Scandella to score the goal that could be very important for Italy's campaign in this tournament. Scandella, who one of the best players on the ice, scored the winner by finding Andersen's five-hole.


The game winning goal, Photo: Roman Kucera

After the game the game winner, he said, "The key in group A is finding ways to win and today the guys who need to step up did it and the other players followed."

Italian coach Rick Cornacchia was very pleased with the win. "I'm very proud of my team. We didn't play well against Germany but now we came out and played well" he said on the press conference and added "We showed a lot of character and We got two early goals who gave us the self confidence we needed." 

He didn't want to speak about the next game against Latvia. "It's very important to enjoy this victory, we won't get so many."

 

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