Tuesday marks the final day of round-robin group play during the 2025 IIHF World Championship tournament in Stockholm, Sweden, and Herning, Denmark. The preliminary round concludes with a marquee game between Team Canada (5-0-1 record) and tournament cohost Team Sweden (6-0-0).
Canada sustained its first loss of the tournament in a 2-1 (2-1) shootout decision against Finland on Monday. A shorthanded goal by Ryan O’Reilly late in the second period gave Canada a 1-0 lead. Patrik Puistola knotted the game at 1-1 in the third period. Those were the only pucks that eluded Juuse Saros or Marc-Andre Fleury until the shootout.
In the shootout, Puistola opened the scoring for Finland. Kent Johnson responded for Canada. Eeli Tolvanen converted the winning attempt in the third round of the five-round shootout.
Team Sweden was idle on Monday. Flyers goaltender Samuel Ersson has split the Tre Kronor goaltending duties in the tournament with New Jersey Devils goalie Jacob Markström.
To date, Ersson has appeared in three games. He’s posted two shutouts along the way, with a 3-0-0 record, 0.67 goals against average and .961 save percentage. Tre Kronor head coach Anders Sörensen has not announced a starter against Canada as of this writing. However, based on the rotation patter to date, Markström is likely to get the nod in the round robin finale.
Ersson is not the only Flyers representative excelling so far in the tournament. The three Flyers players on Team Canada have also fared quite well for themselves and their national team.
Flyers winger Travis Konecny (3g, 6a, 9 points in five games), The Bobby Clarke Trophy winner entered Monday’s game tied with linemate Sidney Crosby for fifth on the tournament scoring leaderboard. Tyson Foerster has one goal and one assist in four games to date. Meanwhile, Flyers defenseman Travis Sanheim has chipped in one assist and a plus-five rating to date.
The single-elimination medal round gets underway on Friday. The top four teams from each of the two preliminary round brackets advance to the quarterfinal round. In Group A, Sweden, Canada and Finland are locked in for the medal round. In Group B, Czechia, Switzerland, and Team USA are set for the quarterfinal.
Yet to be decided on Tuesday: one national team apiece will emerge from the fourth-place spots in each group. In Group A, Latvia, Austria and Slovakia are mathematically alive in the medal round hunt. In Group B, it’s down to Team Germany and tourney cohost Denmark for the final spot.
