Swiss Defeat Austrians at WHC

First things first. I appologize for the site being down the last week or so. Long story short, I was installing an update and the site crashed. We are obviously back up (a big thank you to Steve Paskovich for helping get things back on track) but have lost the posts between last September and now (including all of the 2018-19 Devils season).

Since I intended for this site to act as an archive of all things Devils, I may try to get those posts back up and running in time. It would be time consuming but we will see. I had also been keeping track of the World Championship and the CHL doings during the time the site was down, so those posts may see the light of day at some point too.

Otherwise, it’s business as usual around here with Nico Hischier and the Swiss taking on Austria at the World Hockey Championship in Bratislava. THe Swiss won the game 4-0 as the Austrians just had a complete breakdown of discipline.

Kevin Fiala got the Swiss on the board first with a goal with 33 seconds to go in the opening period. Nico picked up the primary helper on the goal. It was 1-0 Switzerland.

The rest of the scoring came in the third period (and mostly on the power play). Roman Josi scored an even strength goal at the 13:02 mark to give Switzerland the 2-0 lead. This was followed by a lengthly delay in the game as a plexiglass panel was broken and the arena staff tried as fast as they could to get the new piece in. It was the rounded piece near the end of the bench that is springy so that players do not get run into the old-syle turnbuckle.

Once the new glass was in, Austria went on the penalty kill when Thomas Raffl was called for high-sticking at 17:08. The Swiss quickly capitalized when Philipp Kurashev scored (with Hischier getting the lone assist on the goal) to make it 3-0.

With exactly one minute to go, Austria’s Raphael Herburger was given a ten minute misconduct, ending his night. Thirty-four seconds later, Raphael Wolf cross-checked Hischier in the Austrian crease to go off for two minues. Sven Andrighetto made them pay by scoring to make it 4-0 at 19:47.

Austria took 28 minutes in penalties (admittedly only ten minutes more than Switzerland, just more ill-timed) in the game.

Switzerland’s Reto Berra stopped all 18 Austrian shots that he saw and, in the other net, David Kickert was under siege. He faced 45 shots total, making 41 saves.

Nico’s stat line read: the two assists for two points, one shot on goal, was a plus-1 plus/minus in 19:46 of ice time (29 shifts).

Switzerland has a quick turnaround, playing tomorrow against Norway. We will also have coverage tomorrow of the USA-Great Britain game and Germany versus Slovakia.

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