World Hockey Championships: Day 1 & 2 Recap

The first two days of the 2021 IIHF World Hockey Championships have finished with a couple of major upsets already in the books. As was expected going into the tournament, it really feels like a wide open field this year with many of the European teams consisting of mainly players who already played together in the league season, allowing them to generate more chemistry.

Without question the biggest upset has to go to the host Latvians defeating Canada 2-0 on Day 1. It’s really a shame that there weren’t any fans in attendance because that would’ve been a great moment for the crowd as it was Latvia’s first time ever beating Canada. The other big upset was Denmark defeating Sweden 4-3 today as the Danes managed to hold onto their lead despite a late Swedish push.

Here are all of the scores from the first two days:

Day 1

Day 2

After two days, the Russians and Germans sit atop their respective groups with a 2-0 record. Latvia has 4 points through two games after just missing out on qualification for playoffs in the 2019 tournament when they went 3-4. The Czechs are the only team to have lost twice to begin the tournament so far.

From a Flames perspective, Andrew Mangiapane, Nikita Nesterov, and Connor Mackey have yet to suit up for their respective teams as they go through the quarantine procedure and Emilio Pettersen was held pointless in Norway’s first game.

by Michael MacGillivray