Sweden foil Finland´s WC dream with extra-time goal

The journey of Finland in the Ice Hockey World Championship 2024 has been ended when they lost to neighbouring Sweden in the quarter-final in Ostrava Arena, Czech Republic late Thursday night.

Although the regular time of match was 1-1 draw, Joel Eriksson Ek scored a goal for Sweden at the sixth minute of the extra-time resulting end of the World Cup dream for the Lions this year.

Both the Finland and Sweden started the match with attacks and counter-attacks from the very beginning and created several chances of goal but failed to score any in the first and second periods of the game.

They became more aggressive to get a result from the beginning of third period and both the teams created tremendous pressures on each other and finally Rasmus Dahlin scored a goal at the 56^th minute and took 1-0 lead for Sweden.

After conceding the goal the Lions came back strongly and started to play with empty net and finally Hannes Bjorninen leveled the score 1-1 at the last minute of the game resulting draw in the regular time and took the match to an extra time.

Both the teams were playing carefully from the beginning of the extra-time and also created few chances but Konsta Helenius got a penalty for a hooking at the fifth minute creating advantage for the Swedish players and Joel Eriksson Ek sent puck into the Finnish net on the following minute to ensure semi-final for Sweden.

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, Canada 3-5 and Switzerland 1-3.