Ducks at the World Championships, Day 10.

Tomorrow, Luca Sbisa figures to play his last competitive hockey game in a while.

Sbisa and Team Switzerland lost 2-0 to Sweden on Sunday at the IIHF World Championships in Slovakia. It was an all-around poor game for the Swiss, who couldn’t solve goalie Viktor Fasth and didn’t help themselves by taking a string of minor penalties – seven in all – that left them short-handed for 14 minutes.

Sbisa stayed out of the penalty box in 21:43 TOI, but was stuck with a minus-1 rating when Mikael Backlund scored into an empty net in the final minute.

Switzerland (0-1-1-2), now the fifth-place team in Group F, plays the third-place U.S. (2-0-1-1) tomorrow. By then, they will know the result of the game between fourth-place Norway (1-1-0-2) and sixth-place France (0-0-1-3). Norway has five points in the standings and Switzerland has three, but Norway beat Switzerland in the only head-to-head game between the teams. That would seem to preclude Switzerland from reaching fourth place (and thus the Quarterfinal Round), but according to the IIHF.com game recap, Switzerland still has a mathematical chance of advancing.

We’ll find out for sure tomorrow.

This entry was posted in Anaheim Ducks/NHL and tagged , by J.P. Hoornstra. Bookmark the permalink.

About J.P. Hoornstra

J.P. Hoornstra covers the Dodgers, Angels and Major League Baseball for the Orange County Register, Los Angeles Daily News, Long Beach Press-Telegram, Torrance Daily Breeze, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Pasadena Star-News, San Bernardino Sun, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Whittier Daily News and Redlands Daily Facts. Before taking the beat in 2012, J.P. covered the NHL for four years. UCLA gave him a degree once upon a time; when he graduated on schedule, he missed getting Arnold Schwarzenegger's autograph on his diploma by five months.

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