"We shut them down and forechecked well," noted Michelle Lowenheilm. "They didn’t get out of their zone easily. I think we played well. We got a lot of pucks at the goal."

The fallout from the Sweden win means the Swiss will now have to fight the Czechs in the relegation round. That best-of-three series also starts tomorrow, the loser being demoted to Division I-A for 2018. 

"We just tried to do our best, shift by shift, and didn’t think too much about what the game meant," Lowenheilm added. 

The Czechs got on the board first when Michaela Pejzlova scored on the power play at 10:39 of the opening period. The goal, though, seemed to awaken the Swedes, and they tied the game five minutes later when Johanna Fallman beat Klara Peslarova with a shot.

Fallman put the Swedes ahead for good at 5:12 of the second, and less than three minutes later Fanny Rask made it a 3-1 game. Try as they might, the Czechs couldn't get back into the game.

"We’ve had problems scoring goals all tournament," acknowledged forward Katerina Mrazova. "We’ve scored only one in each game, and you’re not going to win very often doing that. Every game is close. We start off well, and then at some point we have a mental lapse and it costs us the game. We have to play a 60-minute game against the good teams here."

This game produced one of the lowest shots totals in World Women's history. The Czechs had but 20 shots and the Swedes 16, that 36 total tying for the third-lowest total ever. The record is 30 between Germany (16) and Japan (14) on April 8, 2008.