ZURICH (AP) \u2014 Sandis Vilmanis scored two empty-net goals and Latvia upset the United States 4-2 to hand the defending champion its third defeat at the ice hockey world championship on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Deniss Smirnovs’ goal early in the third period gave Latvia a 2-1 lead and set up a wild ending.<\/p>\n
The Americans pulled goaltender Devin Cooley for an extra attacker but Vilmanis scored with 1:02 left to make it 3-1.<\/p>\n
The U.S. struck back \u2014 again with six skaters \u2014 when Matthew Tkachuk set up Mathieu Olivier to cut the deficit to one from the slot with 0:51 remaining.<\/p>\n
Vilmanis sealed the victory, though, when he netted his second with 42 seconds to go.<\/p>\n
Latvia opened the scoring in the first period when Haralds Egle connected at 8:47 with his team\u2019s second shot on goal.<\/p>\n
Tkachuk’s power-play goal \u2014 his first at the worlds \u2014 tied it at 1-1 with 5:12 remaining in the middle period. The two-time Stanley Cup winner and Olympic champion played only his second career game at the worlds after joining teammates on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The loss left the U.S. fifth in Group A, one point behind Latvia. The Americans have two group-stage games left against Hungary on Monday and Austria on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
In Group B in Fribourg, Denmark blanked Slovenia 4-0 for its first win.<\/p>\n
Captain Roman Josi scored a hat trick and added an assist and Sven Andrighetto had a five-point game with a goal and four assists as Switzerland shut out Hungary 9-0 in Zurich.<\/p>\n
The dominant hosts have been cruising through the tournament with six wins from six games, including another 9-0 rout of Austria. They lead Group A by three points from Finland.<\/p>\n
In Fribourg, captain Roman \u010cervenka deflected the puck into the net with his skate to score the winner and Czechia topped Slovakia 3-2 in a matchup of countries that once formed Czechoslovakia.<\/p>\n
It was the first defeat for the Slovaks. Canada remained the only unbeaten team and atop Group B. The Czechs were a point behind and Slovakia two points further back.<\/p>\n
Later Saturday, Austria played Germany in Zurich and Sweden faced Norway in Fribourg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ZURICH (AP) \u2014 Sandis Vilmanis scored two empty-net goals and Latvia upset the United States 4-2 to hand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[36706,37828,8713,37829,6422,25937,24204,24203,25934,2302,17],"class_list":["post-71070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-devin-cooley","tag-hockey-worlds-us-sweden-switzerland","tag-latvia","tag-mathieu-olivier","tag-matthew-tkachuk","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-sven-andrighetto","tag-switzerland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116626886876501047","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}