Team Czechia got its first win at this year’s IIHF Women’s U18 World Championship with a 6-1 success over Germany. Early goals from Adela Fromova and Adela Pankova put Dusan Andrasovsky’s team in control before captain Adela Sapovalivova scored a hat-trick to take her personal tally to five for the tournament. 

Sapovalivova still feels there is more to come from her team, despite a big win. "It's really nice that we won, but we didn't play so well," she admitted. "We were slow in battles and we didn't have good passes. I think we have to do better if we want to win a quarter-final."

Despite the defeat Germany still had something to celebrate. Hanna Hoppe scored her country’s first goal of the tournament when she pulled one back on 39 minutes.

"That was a good feeling for the team and for me," Hoppe said. "I think our next games will be better."

Today’s result means Czechia will finish third in Group A, with Germany fourth. Due to the new tournament format, both will play in Thursday’s quarterfinals. The pairings will be determined after Group B concludes tomorrow.
 

In each game so far, Germany has allowed an early goal. Today was no exception: with 1:41 played, Adela Fromova’s shot from the blue line found a path through traffic to beat Hannah Loist.

Germany also struggled to generate offence in its previous appearances, but managed to test Czech goalie Aneta Senkova was equal to Anastasia Gruss’s effort. Almost immediately after that, it was 2-0: a German attack broke down, Adela Pankova jumped on a loose puck in centre ice and left two defenders in her wake as she skated away to score on Loist.

The Czechs, perhaps mindful of the 2-0 lead they blew against Finland in the opening game, went out looking for more goals. However, it was not until late in the opening stanza that Lucie Velinska added a third. The defender showed off her attacking instincts to get to the back door and put Tereza Plosova’s feed into an open net. Ironically, that came moments after Germany’s best chance of the game when Hanna Weichenhain got clear of the defence, only for Senkova to demonstrate her alertness with a strong pad save.

Plosova talked up the value of today's win after two tough losses at the start of the tournament. "It's really important," she said. "We have confidence right now because this was an easier game. We are so happy."

Much of the second period saw the Czechs on the offensive again. However, Loist performed strongly in goal for Germany to keep her team in the game. Better still, late in the frame the Germans scored their first goal at this tournament. Gruss won a face-off to the left of Senkova’s net, Elisa Pietschmann sent the puck back to the blue line and Hanna Hoppe blasted it into the net. After 159 goalless minutes, that was a big moment for Hoppe and her team-mates and it sparked noisy celebrations.

Head coach Jeff MacLeod acknowledged signs of progress from his players. "They're getting better as a team," he said. "The score doesn't show that right now, but there's parts of the game that we were happy with."

Suddenly, Germany could see a route back into the game despite the intense pressure it had to absorb. The start of the third period did not bring a flurry of German offence, but it did see something of a slowdown from the Czech forwards. However, that all changed in the 47th minute when Adela Sapovalivova added a fourth goal with an elegant redirect on Madlen Chladova’s long-range shot.

And the team captain went on to complete a third-period hat-trick. First, she applied a close-range finish to a play involving her linemates Plosova and Anezka Cabelova in the 54th minute. Then, saving the best until last, she circled through the German zone to reach the slot before placing a low wrist shot beyond Loist to complete the scoring.

"It's better that we had that gap and had clear heads [at the end]," Sapovalivova concluded. "We didn't have to stress about the result."