We stuck to the plan and were mentally strong, says Hischier of the Swiss win

Germany said goodbye to the World Championship in Prague and Ostrava in the quarterfinals. The team without a major star was not able to beat a loaded Switzerland, who secured their first top-four spot since 2018. The game was decided in the first period, which the Swiss won 2:0.

Germany did well in the group stage, even scoring 5 or more goals on several occasions. However, what good is it when the Germans say goodbye to the tournament in the phase that decides whether the tournament is a success or a failure.

After a few seconds, the Swiss got a power play, which they didn’t use. At that moment, the German fans certainly let out a sigh of relief, then Germany even played their own power play, which was a strong weapon in the regular season. Unfortunately for them, Christoph Bertschy escaped shorthanded and opened the scoring.

Then Nico Hischier added another goal and the Germans were down 0:2 after the opening period. In the second period, Dominik Kahun scored on the power play to give them a glimmer of hope. However, the Swiss had the game firmly in their hands and with one minute to go Bertschy scored into an empty net to put Switzerland into the semi-finals.

Post-match reactions

“There was quite a lot of pressure on us from the fans and the media before the tournament, but I think we dealt with it well. The longer the tournament went on, the less we dealt with it. After all, it was a good tournament, but unfortunately we lost today”, Kahun started his last interview on Czech territory.

The forward of Bern, Switzerland, did not have a completely successful championship. During 8 games he scored only 4 points for 3 goals and 1 assist. At last year’s championship he had 7 points in 10 games, and was talked about much more than this time.

“The first period was decisive, we didn’t play well or with confidence. I don’t know why, but we showed them too much respect. They got a bit nervous after the goal, but they handled the end of the game well”, the German forward praised his opponents. Kahun especially mentioned the bad opening period.

“We played our game very well. First of all, we managed to keep our system of play for the whole 60 minutes, we had a plan and we executed it. Mentally we were well set up and did a great job,” Hischier described the game.

Source: IIHF