Finland reach quarter-final in Ice Hockey WC despite lose to Swiss

The Lions qualified to the quarter-final in the Ice Hockey World Championship 2024 despite conceding another defeat against Switzerland by 1-3 in Prague, Czech Republic late Tuesday night.

Although the quarter-final place for the Finns was confirmed before beginning of the game following the defeat of Austria against Great Britain on the previous match of the day, they failed to show significant performance against Switzerland in the stress-free game.

Both the teams started the game with attacks and counter-attacks and created several chances to score but failed resulting end of the first period with goalless draw.

The Players of Switzerland became more aggressive from the beginning of second period and Kevin Fiala scored a goal at the 26th minute to take 1-0 lead.

The goal increased the speed of the players of Switzerland prompting widening the gap within in a span of two minutes as Andrea Glauser sent the puck into the net of Finland.

Finland tried to come back and started to dominate over Switzerland and captain Markus Granlund seemed to score a goal at 29th minute but the referees canceled the goal after video check due to offside.

Later Jere Innala scored at the 38th minute and reduced the gap 1-2.

Although the Finns tried to level the score in the third period, they failed to create that much pressure on Switzerland and even they had to be busy to defend.

Kevin Fiala scored his second goal and third for Switzerland to seal the victory at the 57th minute.

The Finns failed to take effort to reduce the gap during the ending minutes following the worst frustrating event of the day when Granlund was ejected from the match for a cross check into Glauser's face.

Finland will face neighbouring Sweden in the quarter-final on Thursday night.

In their group matches, the Lions beat Norway by 4-1, Great Britain by 8-0 and Denmark by 3-1 and lost to Czech Republic on tiebreaker, Austria 2-3 and Canada 3-5.