In a single word, "wow."  The Kiwis are out of the medal rounds.  Although it is still mathematically possible for New Zealand to finish in 2nd place in their pool, it's highly unlikely that they'll be able to recover from their opening two losses against lower seeded opponents.

The 2000 Sydney Paralympic Games bronze medallists have now lost to both the 10th seeded Belgians and the #6 team from Great Britain.  They are currently playing The Netherlands, and will face tough opponents from Australia (Paralympic silver medallists) and the Germans, who already have a victory at the World Championships.  Congrats to the Brits on their impressive victory!

In related news, the Belgians continue to impress the gallery, as they've earned their 3rd straight win, this time over the Germans.  Instead of their narrow 1 goal victories over the Kiwis and the Brits, the Belgians earned their latest win by an impressive 12 goal point spread.

Our Canadian team earned their second win and are now undefeated in Pool "A", having earned a solid victory over the Swiss while using the entire Canadian team, including our rookies (*), as is reflected in the goal scorers:

14 - Mike Whitehead * (3.0, London, ON)
13 - Daryl Stubel (2.0, Regina, SK)
8 - Al Semeniuk (2.0, Saskatoon, SK)
7 - Garett Hickling (3.5, Kelowna, BC)
5 - David Willsie (2.0, London, ON)
4 - Patrice Simard (1.5, Québec, QC)
2 - Adam Frost * (2.5, Vancouver, BC)
1 - Mike Bacon (1.0, Saskatoon, SK)

Team Canada nearly doubled the Swiss, with the game ending 59-31, the widest point spread of the tournament thus far.  Things are looking good for our disciplined and talented team.

Our next opponents at the Worlds is a team quite familiar to us, as we've played with them often this season in tournament and exhibition play on our US Tours.  We take on the host country at noon hour tomorrow, Gothenburg time.  Later that day at 7pm we go up against the Austrians, who are the low seeded team in our pool.  So far the Swedes are 2-1, having defeated Austria by 21 and Japan by 9, and losing to the top-seeded Americans by 7.  The Austrians have yet to win a game, having lost to the Swedes by 21 and the Swiss by 6.  Both Austria and Canada have two games to play tomorrow, as the Austrians will take on both of the strong North American teams on the same day.  It's got to be a tough day for the Austrian fans.

For those of you looking for game analysis on one of the US games, check out the USQRA web page for information on the USA-SWE game.  Analysis on Swedish games can be found on the WC web site in their reports section.