In the final of the 2024 World Cup, teams hungry for gold medals met. The last time the Czech Republic won an international tournament was in 2010, and Switzerland never did. At the same time, it was the Czech hockey players who approached the main match as favorites.

Firstly, Radim Rulik’s players received strong support from the home stands. Secondly, the Czech Republic simply has a more stellar roster, even without taking into account Pavel Zaha and David Pastrnak, who joined the team during the championship. However, before the final the hosts had problems. Rulik did not know until recently whether defender Jakub Krejcik, who was injured in the previous meeting, would play against Switzerland. Also, the head coach could not count on another defensive player, Jann Rutta, who was disqualified for one match for elbowing Swedish striker Isak Lundeström in the semi-finals.

– This is a big loss. We didn’t like the sending off at all, but we have to accept it as reality and somehow come to terms with it,” said assistant coach Jiri Kalush.

These problems of the Czech national team could bring gold to Switzerland and… Russia. The fact is that Philip Kurashev, the son of Soviet hockey player Konstantin Kurashev, plays in the Swiss lineup. However, Rulik’s team showed boring but effective hockey and won the main victory at the home tournament.

Spectators could approach the third period

In the first period, tension was felt due to the significance of each mistake. The teams played extremely carefully and did not take unnecessary risks. Moreover, the opponents were not shy about drying up the game openly. For example, Czech hockey players could skate to someone else’s blue line, and then return to their own zone to try to start an attack on the second try.

And the Swiss defenders stood outside the goal for a long time and waited for the whole five to go down. At this moment, Russian fans probably remembered the KHL, in which referees can be sent off for such inaction.

The teams showed such closed hockey that the highlight of the first period was a funny episode with the participation of Czech player Ondrej Beranek. The forward in the middle zone tried to catch the flying puck with his hand, but lost his balance and fell over the side onto the Swiss bench. The rest of the time, fans had to watch the formation of defensive echelons and the fight in the corners of the site.

One scored puck into any goal would change the pattern of the game. But the second period also became a place of confrontation between goalkeepers. The keepers kept their opponents dry and kept zeros on the scoreboard.

The less time remained until the end of regulation time, the more the teams closed in on defense. So the final 20 minutes promised to be sparse in events. However, already at the beginning of this segment of the game, Ondřej Palat pleased the fans with a devastating hit on Andre Glozer.

The strong impact even caused a crack to appear on the protective glass. The judges decided that the damaged fence needed to be replaced and gave the arena workers the appropriate task. The time while the employees were fiddling with the glass was the most interesting for the audience.

It seemed that for the rest of the period nothing could compare with this episode, but in the 50th minute a scoring miracle happened! After winning a throw-in in the opponent’s zone, Tomas Kundratek found David Pastrnak with a pass, who opened the scoring with a one-touch throw.

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Switzerland had just over 10 minutes to save the match. From that moment on, Patrick Fischer’s team did not part with the puck and carried out long positional attacks, but the Czech defense did not allow the opponent to create a truly dangerous moment at Lukas Dostal’s goal.

At the end of the period, Switzerland changed Leonardo Genoni to the sixth field player and went for the final assault. The Swiss failed to equalize the score: the Czechs played reliably in defense, and David Kampf scored into an empty net 19 seconds before the siren – 2:0.

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As a result, the Czech team took gold for the first time in 14 years, and the attractive Swiss team lost in the World Cup final for the third time in 11 years.