The Czech Republic beat Latvia in the final match in group A, which means that the home team goes to the semifinals too. It took just three minutes to determine the winner of this match, as Czechia scored four times during that period. Latvia ends up in third place in group A and will play in the 5th place match.

This match was balanced firstly, even if the score probably doesn’t show it. There were hard battles for every single ball from both sides of the field till the 7th minute of the first period, but then the Latvian collapse appeared. It was Matej Penicka who scored first and his teammate Tomas Hanak followed him with the second goal after 22 seconds.

Latvia was broken by this, made some bad passes and lost personal duels, which occurred to four goals during just three minutes. Sadly for them, the fourth goal was recognized after the video review.      

And it could be even worse because Czech players scored two other goals which weren´t recognized due to the high stick and paused game – simply, the audience was great again here in Brno and nobody heard a whistle.

The Czech Republic takes second place in group A and in the semifinals will fight with the winner of group B on Saturday. This will be the winner of Friday’s match between Sweden and Switzerland.

Czech Republic 12:2 Latvia (1:4), (0:2), (1:6)

goals: 12. Jēkabs Keišs, 48. Sandis Lēvalds – 8. Matěj Pěnička, 8. Tomáš Hanák, 10. Matyáš Bachmaier, 11. Matěj Havlas, 31. Tomáš Hanák, 36. Armands Savins, 43. Filip Forman, 45. Matěj Čermák, 54. Petr Majer, 55. Matěj Pěnička, 59. Matěj Pěnička, 60. Vojtěch Klápa; referees: Bartosz Burek – Wojciech Czarnecki; penalties: 5:2; powerplay goals: 1:2; saves: Klaids Maļcevs 19 – Tomáš Jurco 5; after periods: 1:4, 0:2, 1:6;