Switzerland beats U.S, do not advance

        You win some and you lose some. Despite missing a top ten NHL goalie (Jonas Hiller) and a top five offensive defenseman (Mark Streit) team Switzerland were optimistic with their chances going into the World Championships. While being happy about taking four of six points against USA and Canada, they are very disappointed with the overtime win against France and its regulation loss to Norway. Because of the loss to Norway, Switzerland for the first time in a long time is missing the quarterfinals.

        While missing Hiller, Streit and Montreal’s Yannick Weber and AHLer Roman Wick, they also missed the size and grit of Thomas Deruns. Deruns would have given the Switz a Holdstrom- Franzen net presence something that was dearly missed.

        Before today’s 5-3 win over the Americans the Switz lacked offense the entire tournament, scoring only 6 goals in their four previous games.  “As a team we don’t score enough goals and we took too many penalties,” said Captain Mathias Seger.

        Switzerland’s goal coming into Championship was to try and improve on last year’s 5^th place performance. They now can do no better than 9^th place, mainly because of the loss to Norway. “We can’t be satisfied with the whole situation,” said forward Kevin Lotscher.

The only thing they can take out of this performance, it can only get better and cannot get any worse.

Quarterfinals set

(1)    Canada vs (4) Russia

(2)    Sweden vs (3) Germany

(1)    Czech Republic vs (4) U.S.A

(2)    Finland vs (3) Norway

Are there potential upsets in the quarterfinals? The only two potential upsets I see would be Germany over Sweden or Norway over Finland. I do not see the Russians or Americans standing much of a chance versus the number one seed.

Germany & Norway have no room for error, specialty teams have to be good and goaltending has to be solid