Sweden now appears to have a slightly more difficult path to the World Championship final, which is the obvious goal for the home nation. But it is clear that Finland – as usual the big challenger to a Swedish gold – has plans to snatch the World Championship title.
"Too weak from us"
Tuesday's match was a pure group final after both countries started the championship with planned wins against Latvia and Slovakia.
And Finland, whose World Championship start had been unexpectedly pale, now raised their game several levels when facing their worst rival.
Malte Lundmark gave Sweden the lead with four seconds left of the first period. But then Finland took control of the match. Sami Johansson equalized in numerical superiority 6.35 into the second period and Heikki Iiskola completed the turnaround when he made it 2–1 with two minutes left to play in the middle act.
We fall into their game, they want to slow down the tempo. It's a really good first period, but now we're going down too much, it's a bit too weak from us, said Robin Nilsberth to SVT before the final period.
But the Finns continued to be more on their toes after the break, and when Jesper Sankell got a Swedish penalty, they struck directly. Joona Rantala whipped in another Finnish power-play goal just over seven minutes into the third period.
Just from the momentum, Nico Jonaeson then countered to make it 4–1 to Finland a minute later.
May get tough Czech Republic
Sweden pulled out the goalkeeper and got a reduction – Malte Lundmark scored his fifth goal in the tournament – but it never got exciting, and Finland won in the end with 5–2.
The loss means that Sweden will face Germany or Poland in the quarterfinal. In a potential semifinal, Sweden is likely to face the hitherto unbeaten Czech Republic, which won the other of the two top-ranked groups.
