On Sunday, August 14, the Latvian U-20 hockey team surprisingly defeated their peers from the Czech Republic 5:2 in the last game of the World Championship preliminaries, entering the quarterfinals.
Content will continue after the ad
Advertising
The Latvian junior hockey team, led by Artas Ābola, took third place in Group A in the preliminaries, thereby ensuring at least a repetition of the best U-20 national team’s achievement of all time – sixth place.
The Latvian U-20 national team had so far met their Czech counterparts three times in the framework of the world championship and lost all three times.
The Latvian U-20 national team surprised the Czechs at the beginning of the game – in the fifth minute Martins Laviņš put the team in the lead, and in the 13th minute Rainers Rullers made it 2-0. In the 17th minute, the young hockey players of the Czech Republic mostly recovered one goal, but in the middle of the second period they also achieved a 2:2 draw.
The captain of the Latvian U-20 national team, defender Ralfs Bergmanis, became the main character of the game in the continuation, who scored a “hat trick”, leading the team to the quarter-finals. Soon after the second goal scored by the Czech juniors, Bergmanis restored Latvia’s advantage, but two and a half minutes before the end of the second period, the score was also 4:2.
Bergmanis scored his third goal at the end of the match, sending the puck into an empty Czech goal.
The content of the publication or any part of it is protected by copyright within the meaning of the Copyright Law, and its use without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Read more here.
