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.