The Ice Hockey World Championship this year was held in two capitals of the Scandinavian countries - Stockholm and Helsinki. 16 teams from three continents spent almost three weeks in May figuring out which of them should be named the best national team on the planet in this sport. In the presence of almost half a million spectators, the national teams held 64 meetings, threw 376 goals and on May 20, finally, they revealed the champion.
This year the teams started the first stage of the tournament in two groups of 8 teams each. According to the first letters of the names of the cities in which the games of the groups were held, they were designated by the letters S and H. The Russians spent this stage in Stockholm, where, at the 14,000th Globen Arena, together with teams from Sweden, Czech Republic, Norway, Latvia, Germany, Denmark and Italy identified four participants in the quarterfinals. On May 5, our team played the first league game, beating the Latvian team with a score of 5: 2. The continuation turned out to be no less successful, the Russians consistently won all the matches, especially offending the hosts - the Russia-Sweden match in the presence of 11.5 thousand spectators ended with a score of 7: 3.
All the favorites have advanced from the group stage to the quarterfinals this year, no surprises happened. In addition to our national team in Stockholm, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Norway advanced to the playoff stage, and in Helsinki, such teams were the USA, Canada, Finland and Slovakia. And Russia played the quarterfinal game in the Swedish capital, beating the Norwegian national team for the second time in this championship - the match ended with a score of 5: 2. Then our hockey players had to move to a neighboring country - to Helsinki, in the semifinals, they beat the Finnish national team with an even larger score (6: 2) in the presence of 13 thousand fans. Another semi-final was represented by countries that were relatively recently one state - the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In this game, the Slovaks were stronger (3: 1), thanks to which they got into the final pair of our team, already four hours waiting for the name of the last victim on the way to gold.
The main game took place on the evening of May 20 at the Hartwall Arena in Helsinki. By this time, all the other results of the championship were already known. Bronze medals were won by the Czechs, beating the Finnish national team in a tough struggle (3: 2), while Italy and Kazakhstan were unable to gain a foothold in the hockey elite and again left the top division. In the final game Russia-Slovakia, only the first period ended with an equal score (1: 1), while the other two were won by our hockey players. The final score of this fight is 6: 2. The Russian national team became the world champion for the fourth time, and if we add the Soviet times, this is already the 26th gold of the highest hockey standard.
