Czechia cruises to win over Germany at world juniors

Czechia has a shot to win Group A with a convincing 8-1 victory over Germany in their final round-robin game.

The Czechs will wait until later to find out who they play in the quarterfinal, while Germany will play the winner of Group B, which will be either the United States or Finland.

The odds were against Germany from the get-go, and a poor first period didn’t help. At 4:58, David Spacek’s strong tournament continued after Stanislav Svozil found him alone on the power play to make it 1-0. At 17:07, Gabriel Szturc made it a two-goal game after Jakub Brabenec forced a turnover. He got the puck to Gabriel Szturc, who made no mistake in close to beat Nikita Quapp for the 2-0 goal.

Quapp was Germany’s best player, making 21 stops in the first half of the game. But the German coaching staff pulled him with 11 minutes left in the second, presumably to keep him fresh for the quarterfinal. Unfortunately for new goalie Simon Wolf, he entered the game and immediately allowed a goal on his first shot against. Brabenec made a nice pass from behind the net to Jaroslav Chmelar, who fired a shot from in close for the 3-0 goal.

The Germans weren’t prepared to go down quietly, though. At 32:35, Veit Oswald got his own rebound off of a shot off the boards and jammed in past Tomas Suchanek, who otherwise had a quiet period for the Czechs.

Germany didn’t have much to answer back with after that, though. Martin Rysavy scored five minutes later to restore Czechia’s three-goal advantage, and Petr Hauser made it a four-goal difference less than a minute after that. Goals for Chmelar and Jakub Kos in the third made it a 7-1 game, with Jiri Tichacek scoring late to make it 8-1.