The Czech ice hockey team won gold yesterday at the World Championships, hosted by the Czech cities of Prague and Ostrava, defeating Switzerland 2-0 in the final game in Prague.
The Czechs won gold for the first time in 14 years. The winning goal was scored at 49:13 by Boston’s star forward David Pastrnak. David Kampf sealed the result with 19 seconds left on a power play into the empty net. Goaltender Lukas Dostal contributed to the triumph with his third clean sheet of the championship.
The Czechs won gold for the first time since the 2010 championships in Cologne and Mannheim. The Czech team has won seven times in the era of the independent Czech Republic, as well as six gold medals won by the former Czechoslovakia.
By taking silver, the Swiss equalled their historic bests from 1935, 2013 and 2018.
The championships have attracted a record attendance of 797,727 across all matches, exceeding the previous record from 2015 (also in the Czech Republic) by 56,037. There was also a new record per game of 12,464, compared to an average of 11,589 per game in 2015.
The record fell during Saturday’s semifinal between the Czech Republic and Sweden, which attracted 17,413 spectators to the sold-out O2 Arena. The evening semifinal between Canada and Switzerland was attended by 11,159 fans.
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Today’s 3rd place duel between Canada and Sweden attracted 14,929 spectators in the afternoon, and the Czech Republic vs Switzerland tie in the evening was sold out.
A total of 547,602 people attended the 36 games at Prague’s O2 Arena, an average of 15,211 per game. All ten games of the Czech national team were sold out. In Ostrava, 250,125 fans came and the capacity was completely filled for all the Slovak games and another eight matches. The average was 8,933 spectators per game.