Slovenia - Austria latest news and quick facts

17 Feb 2014 | Davide Tuniz

Do you know:

Michael Grabner is the tournament's second-leading scorer behind American Phil Kessel, with five goals and one assist in three games
Austria ranks fourth in the tournament in scoring efficiency, having netted seven goals on 70 shots
Anze Kopitar has won 42 faceoffs in three games, more than any other player in the tournament. He ranks third in faceoff percentage, winning 72.41% of draws
Austria has won three of four meetings against Slovenia at the world championship. Their most recent meeting in the relegation round of the 2011 world championship resulted in a 3-2 Austria win
Austrian goaltender Mathias Lange has allowed one goal in 80 minutes of play
Slovenia's Ziga Jeglic is his team's top scorer with two points and an assist
Slovenia has the worst team save percentage in the tournament, having stopped just 87.91% of shots on goal.
Slovenia faced Austria as first ever opponent after the country indipendence from former Yugoslavia, on 20.03.1992 in Klagenfurt. Austria won 1-0

The winner will face top seed Sweden in the quarterfinals.

Head-to-head:

Austria and Slovenia played 22 times: Austria won 10, Slovenia 8 and there were 4 draws. Last game was in Innsbruck, on November 8, 2013: Austria - Slovenia 2-0 (1-0,0-0,1-0)

Players and staff about the game:

Nik Zupancic (Slovenia assistant coach): Austria and Slovenia having played each other many times before: in one way it helps because every time you want to know about an opponent you want to know about the breakout, about the power play, all these things and in this case it is more familiar. But the other way around, of course, they know all about us, so it should be equal

On how Slovenia will beat Austria: The first thing is discipline. We must play disciplined from the first minute because in the last game we didn't start well. This is one of the keys, along with defence, and the third one is penalties. We cannot afford to have too many penalties because that could be a killer. If we execute these three keys like we should, we could have success.

Robert Kristan (Slovenia): Both teams are happy to play against each other. Everybody is saying that we have played against Austria many times before but each time it is a completely different team. We have never played each other with the best Austria and the best from Slovenia. They have skilful players. Their first line is made up of players from the NHL (National Hockey League) and those guys can score, so we have to be ready. But the other guys we have played against our whole lives.

Thomas Vanek (Austria) Slovenia it's a team with structure that works hard, similar to us. I think it's going to be a good battle. At the end of the day if we win, it's great, if not, as long as we left it out there it's ok. We're not Canada, we know that. The guys are great, we just play hard and proud, and if we win a game we'd sure be happy.

Michael Raffl (Austria) We have to play the same way we played against Norway, really compact in our end, no odd-man rushes. Just do the basic things, the little things right and take advantage of our chances.We have a real good chance to reach the quarterfinals, and that would be amazing for Austrian hockey.

Quote of the game:

Robert Kristan (Slovenia goalie): After our victory against Slovakia people are just going crazy. Friends are happy and celebrating and we are happy for them too, they can start drinking early.