Estonian U18 moves up
Spanish silver curse continues
Vladimir Nestertsuk and Kristjan Simson celebrate Estonia’s opening goal in the final game against Spain.
Estonia won the 2016 IIHF Ice Hockey U18 World Championship Division II Group B after edging host Spain 5-4 in the final game to earn fast promotion back to the Division II Group A.
Both teams swept through the tournament undefeated during the first four game days. Estonia beat Serbia (5-3), Belgium (10-0), China (3-2) and Iceland (15-2). Spain started with a 7-2 victory against China and continued with wins over Serbia (4-2), Iceland (3-0) and Belgium (8-5).
Team captain Vladimir Nestertsuk, who dominated the scoring race with 7 goals and 13 points, opened the scoring for Estonia but Spain made it a 2-1 first-period lead with power-play goals from Bruno Baldris and Alejandro Burgos.
The Estonians became stronger in the second period and in the 36th minute they succeeded with two goals within a span of 38 seconds from Nikita Minin and Rasmus Kiik.
Spain came back in the third period. After eight seconds of play Burgos tied the game with his second marker of the night. The Estonians replied immediately with Dmitri Patrusev’s 4-3 goal half a minute later but at 10:23 Alberto Martinez tied it at four.
Eventually the Estonians broke the deadlock again with Nikita Kozorev’s 5-4 goal that turned out to stay as the game-winner. Estonia won gold at the tournament, Spain had to settle for silver again.
For Spain silver has become the predominant colour. While the men’s team competed in the Division II Group A since last year, all other teams play in the Division II Group B where the U20 team won silver in 2014, 2015 and 2016; the U18 team has now won silver medals in four consecutive years (2013-2016) and the women’s team was also denied promotion having to settle for silver in 2012, 2013 and 2016.
Serbia recovered from the losses against the two top seeds and beat Belgium (2-1), China (1-0) and Iceland (4-0) to earn the bronze medals.
Iceland, Belgium and China ended up in a three-team tie with three points each after China got its first win on the last day, 5-4 against Belgium. It was one goal too little for the Chinese to avoid relegation as the goal difference in the head-to-head games decided with recently promoted Iceland finishing in fourth place (9-8) before Belgium (9-9) and China (8-9). It is Iceland’s best finish in four years.
China’s Mingwei Ren was named Best Goaltender, Spain’s Bruno Baldis Best Defenceman and Estonian scoring leader Vladimir Nesertsuk Best Forward.