2024-05-11 06:49:58
A handy calendar to start the tournament on a positive note. The national hockey team of Latvia will play with lower-ranked teams at the World Championship (WC) in Ostrava this weekend. Saturday’s opponent Poland is an elite newcomer, while France, which took 12th place in the final ranking last year, will face Latvia, the holder of the tenth position in the world ranking, on Sunday. Both games start at 17.20 Latvian time.
A year ago, the situation was very different. The Latvian hockey players started the WC in Riga against the main favorites and the future champions, the Canadians, to whom they lost unreservedly with 0:6. Then followed another stumble in the game with Slovakia (1:2). This year, it is quite realistic to start the WC with three victories, because after Poland and France, the next opponent will be Kazakhstan, which they managed to defeat last year with 7-0.
Poles will play in the top group for the first time since 2002. The first opponents got a place in the elite after winning the second place in the A group of the 1st division of the WC 2023. Poland defeated Lithuania (7:0), Italy (4:2), South Korea (7:0) and Romania (6:2), but lost to Great Britain (4:5 in extra time), which also took a step up.
Read the whole article in newspapers Day in the issue of Friday, May 10! If you want to continue reading the newspaper in printed form, you can subscribe to it
2024-05-11 06:49:58