Confederation captain Sam Hallam after the World Cup exit: “Huge disappointment”

Despite the home field advantage for Latvia and the fact that Tre Kronor was forced to leave Tampere for Riga, Sweden was heavily favored for the World Cup quarter-finals. It was also Tre Kronor who created the most and shot the most and big moments carried the game.

But when the distribution did not happen, except for one time when Timothy Liljegren sent the 1-1 puck up the crossbar, it was a loss and an exit.

Latvia got it right three more times.

— We have enough chances to kill the game early, but we don’t succeed. They get an early goal and we have to work uphill the whole game, it was tough and they are doing well. They drove on and got good flow and support from the audience, who supported them when they took the lead, says Oscar Lindberg in SVT.

Union captain Sam Hallam was of course not happy with the outcome of the match.

– Huge disappointment. It is difficult to draw any analyzes immediately after, but we are incredibly disappointed. We came here for something completely different than going out in the quarter-finals, he says in SVT and continues:

– We own large parts of the match and they have a few isolated attacks, what we don’t manage to do is get the puck in the goal and create a match picture where we have to use our defensive which has worked well. If you look at the number of shots and goal chances, we win a match like this significantly more times than we lose, unfortunately we lost today.

READ MORE: Ek: Losing against Latvia is a fiasco no matter how you look at it

At the end of the second period and at the beginning of the third period, Tre Kronor had the chance for five straight minutes in the power play, but lost. In total, they played over ten minutes in numerical superiority, but did not find the right one once.

– We have some good looks and create chances, but the last touch… we just can’t get it there, says Lindberg before the national team captain fills in.

– It is clear that it leaves a certain mark on it. Latvia is of course growing from being shut down and those on the ice may feel disappointed that they didn’t take advantage of it.

Lindberg became the best scorer in Tre Kronor in the championship with his three goals. He would have been more than happy to increase that number through further games in the WC.

– It is given up. We toil in a long tournament, a long season, and to have to end like this is tough, he says.