The penultimate day of the men’s Division 1B tournament wasn’t without drama. Lithuania beat Croatia, but surprisingly the game went into overtime, handing the Lithuanians their first point loss in the tournament. However, on Friday, that won’t matter when Lithuania takes on Korea, the only team with a perfect record.
Korea beat the hosts 4-1, setting up a winner-take-all final for Friday. The winner of the Korea v Lithuania game will earn promotion to Division 1A.
“Korea is a fast team, so we need to play as a unit, just like we did against Estonia,” said Lithuanian forward Mark Kaleinikovas.
China beat Spain in the last game of the day, 4-3, in a shootout.
Lithuania – Croatia 2-1 OT (0-0, 1-0, 0-1, 1-0)
Lithuania came to the game undefeated, with a perfect 3-0-0 record. Croatia’s record was the mirror image, 0-0-3. Lithuania is still undefeated, but their record now has a small blemish on it, .as they beat Croatia on overtime, 2-1.
Lithuania’s hero was Ugnius Cizas who scored the OT winner at 3.21. His teammate Mark Kaleinikovas scored one and added an assist. Croatia’s goaltender Vito Nikolic made 51 saves.
“Getting the win was what we wanted. It was a hard-fought game—we struggled to score but created a lot of chances and stayed patient. I liked our resiliency, even scoring late. We’ve put ourselves in a good spot for tomorrow;” Lithuania’s assistant coach Dan Lacroix said.
Lithuania outshot Croatia 53-19 in the game.
In the first period the shots favored Lithuania 23-5, but they just couldn’t solve Nikolic.
Croatia had their best chances of the period on power play and at one point, the puck was dancing on the goal line, but that was as close as they got.
Halfway through the second period Kaleinikovas got the puck on Lithuania’s blueline. He flew down the left wing and fired a wrister from the left circle. Nikolic made the initial save, and he even stopped the next shot next one, but the puck stayed flat on the crease and Kaleinikovas could tap it in to give Lithuania the important 1-0 lead at 10.16.
But like so many times before in the tournament. Croatia used their few chances with great efficiency. A little more than three minutes into the third period, Karlo Marinkovic and Borna Rendulic got on a 2-on-1. Marinkovic sent a gorgeous saucer pass to the tape of Rendulic’s stick and he tied the game at 3.47. The goal was the Croatian forward’s sixth point in the tournament.
In the OT, it was Croatia that had the…
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