Russia sends Austria to Division 1

This was the last game for Austria of this World Championship. And the last chance to avoid relegation. They didn't take the chance.

"We won the wrong games," said Austria's coach Herburger to IIHF.com. "We played well against Latvia and Slovakia, but lost to Germany and France. Too bad it worked out like this."

After an unlucky opening of the game with two allowed goals during the first 8:15 they took Russia by surprise. Within fifteen seconds Matthias Iberer and Thomas Vanek scored to tie the game. At 15:56 they even took the lead when Michael Raffle beat Semyon Varlamov in the Russian net. When Austria had Gregor Baumgartner and Thomas Pöck on the penalty bench Igor Nikulin used the 2-man advantage to tie the game at 3.

Austria outshot Russia 15-5 in the second period and 36-18 in the game but it wasn't enough. Russia scored three goals in the second period and Austria only one when Florian Iberer made it 4-4.

Russia added two goals in the last period to earn a secure 4-goal win in the end.

Ilya Kovalchuk scored his eighth goal of the tournament and added a pair of assists to return as the scoring leader of the championship. Alexander Radulov scored his fifth goal and Alexander Perezhogin his second. Five Russian players scored their first goal of the tournament: Ilya Nikulin, Sergei Mozyakin, Sergei Soin, Nikita Zaitsev and Yuri Kuznetsov.

This was also Russia's last game of the group stage and they took over the lead of the Helsinki group. They will surely not finish on top. For that to happen both USA (vs. Slovakia) and Finland (vs. Latvia) must lose tomorrow.

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