After 12 days of really exciting international hockey, the quarterfinal matchups of the 2021 IIHF World Hockey Championships are set. The tournament featured a number of typically underdog countries making exciting runs either into the playoffs or just missing out. Among these teams were Kazakhstan and Latvia in Group B who just missed with 10 and 9 points respectively, while Denmark finished only a few points out in Group A.
The only real unexpected result in terms of missing the playoff round was Sweden in Group A as they couldn’t recover from a couple of early tournament losses, finishing two points behind the fourth place Czechs.