Latvia picks up first two points against Switzerland

While Latvia hadn't collected any points against the "tougher" teams Sweden, Canada and the Czech Republic, Switzerland has been struggling to collect full points against Austria, Germany and France which are considered to be beatable opponents from a Swiss point of view. Latvia has been one of those teams for a long time but recently, the eastern European country has been able to upset some of the bigger teams. Switzerland was one of those teams at the Winter Olympics last year where the Latvians sent home the Swiss squad in the qualification round.

While the first period didn't see much action, it was Latvia's Andris Dzerins who got his team on the scoreboard and made the Swiss work harder. Although the Swiss had 3 powerplay chances in a row in the second period, they weren't able to score on any of those. Switzerland has struggled to score in general through out the tournament against the smaller teams, creating only 7 goals in 3 games.

For the longest time it looked as if the Latvians would keep those 3 points during the third period but in the 59th minute Matthias Bieber got the puck past Edgars Masalskis who had kept his team in the game especially in the last 20 minutes. An overtime would decide over the extra point as the time was running down. With a little more than 2 minutes played it was Kaspars Daugavins with the game winning goal who left the Swiss stunned with the second overtime loss. 

Switzerland's chances of reaching the quarterfinal are still intact but they're now facing far more tougher competition during the next few days while Latvia will get a shot at catching up by facing France, Germany and Austria.

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