In the first quarterfinal on Thursday at the 2025 IIHF Women’s World Championship in České Budějovice, Czechia, Finland beat Sweden 3-2.

It was a game that was dominated by the Finns in the first period, who took a 2-0 lead before the Swedes answered back with a pair of quick goals early in the second. The game-winning goal was scored late in the middle frame by Susanna Tapani on a play the Swedes thought should have been stopped for a tripping penalty against Finland in the neutral zone.

“I don’t think we played a very good first period, to be honest,” said Swedish captain Anna Kjellbin. “We got the response we were talking about in the locker room that break and had a better second period and then, you know, battling in the third. I’m not totally happy with that (third) period, to be honest. We needed more pucks to the net. But it’s always tight games against (Finland).”

“We came out pretty weak but we stepped up in the second period, tied it up, and I thought we were going, but I still don’t think we played our best game of the tournament today,” said Josefin Bouveng, who scored the 2-2 goal six minutes into the second period.

“It’s tough because we’ve beaten Finland before and they’ve beaten us too,” Bouveng continued. “We know we could have won this game but the Finns came out stronger and were more consistent the whole game. We had some good moments but we need to be more consistent the whole game.”

Michelle Karvinen Breaks Finnish National Team Scoring Record Michelle Karvinen, captain of the Finnish women’s national team, scored the eventual game-winning goal at 7:27 of the second period of Finland’s 2-1 victory over Switzerland in IIHF Women’s World Championship action on Monday.

In the early years of international women’s hockey, Sweden vs. Finland was a regular bronze-medal match-up. Finland has consistently been one of the top women’s national teams and Sweden used to be right there with them, even winning a silver medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics.

However, Swedish women’s hockey stagnated somewhat in the 2010s and the team was relegated from the Women’s Worlds after a ninth-place finish in 2019. Following a couple of years of pandemic-related cancellations and a format that makes it very difficult for outside teams to break into the top group, they’re still trying to find their way back to the top tier of teams. This year, they finally made it back to the top of Group B.

“This is the first time I’ve been here where we’ve won the group and did not play the U.S. or Canada (in the quarterfinals), so I think this is a step forward,” said Bouveng, a 23-year-old center who plays for the University of Minnesota.

“We’ve been on a journey now the last couple of years and we’ve been taking steps every year,” said Kjellbin. “I must say we did better this year. We won the group and gave ourselves the best opportunity we could in the quarterfinals.”

New Format Coming

This is the last year of the tiered group system that sees teams seeded 1 through 5 in Group A and 6 through 10 in Group B. Next year will see a return to balanced groups, using the “serpentine” or “snake” seeding system that is common in most other IIHF tournaments.

The tiered format was introduced in 2012, partly to minimize blowouts in the group stage and also to give the top European women’s teams more head-to-head games against Canada and the USA in an effort to close the gap. In that respect, it has been somewhat effective, as while the North American teams rarely lose to their top European counterparts, the games, particularly against Finland or Czechia, are now usually much more competitive than they used to be, and the scores more respectable.

Natalie Mlynkova On USA: ‘We’re Coming For Them’ – On Finland: ‘We Want To Prove That We’re The Best Team In Europe’ After opening with a 3-0 win over Switzerland, Czechia dropped its second game of the 2025 IIHF Women’s World Championship 4-0 to the USA despite being without Kateřina Mrázová, Michaela Pejzlová or starting goaltender Klára Peslarová.

However, for teams outside the top five, the system makes it very difficult to break into that group. It means that three of the quarterfinals pit Group A teams against Group B teams that have been playing entirely different calibers of opponents.

“You can see that, coming from Group A, you have a different tempo and different quality of games,” said Kjellbin. “I think mixing the teams will benefit everybody.”

Asked if she thought playing against Group B teams all week put her team at a competitive disadvantage against Finland, Kjellbin answered, “I don’t want to say that, but obviously it’s different. Again, they were coming with another tempo, but that’s not why they won today.”

“Moving forward, I think it’s always beneficial to play against the best in the world and, obviously, I want to play against the U.S. or Canada more than just once every other year,” said Bouveng.

Assuming neither the USA nor Canada lose their quarterfinal games to Germany or Japan, the Swedes have one more game on Saturday against the loser of the Czechia-Switzerland game. That’s because the outgoing format calls for a playoff game between the top two ranked quarterfinal losers, whose purpose was to determine who got the fifth spot in Group A the following year along with the four semifinalists. The change in format makes the game almost meaningless, but it’s on the schedule nonetheless.

Eight and Eight: Is It The Better Model For The IIHF World Championships Whether it's balanced pools, or a single smaller grouping, the IIHF needs to find more competition for teams through re-alignment writes Ian Kennedy.