World Championship: Austria Stays Perfect, Slovaks At Risk

Austria remained perfect propelled by performances from their stars, while Slovakia slipped closer to a devastating result.

Day two of the women's Division 1A World Championships saw multiple shutouts with Austria staying perfect, and Netherlands shutting out Slovakia to put the Slovaks at serious risk for demotion.

Selma Luggin and Anna Meixner have placed Austria on their shoulders through the first two games of the D1A World Championships. Luggin, 20, has stopped all 59 shots she's faced first shutting out Norway 4-0, followed by a 28 save 1-0 shutout against Denmark. Luggin will play for Linkoping in the SDHL this season. 

"It was a crazy game," Luggin said following the game. "We fought so hard, we fought for every puck. We almost never let the Danes have the puck for more than three seconds. That was a strong team performance, I'm so proud of this young team. This was a great win for Austria, we last lost to Denmark in the Olympic qualifiers and now we got revenge!"

On the offensive side of the puck, Anna Meixner scored her tournament leading third goal, the only goal of the game, to lift Austria to the 1-0 win. Meixner is the reigning SDHL MVP and widely considered one of the top players on the planet. Assisting on Meixner's game winning goal early in the second period was 18-year-old Emma Hofbauer who is committed to play for Providence College and Annika Faokas.

It's bad news for fans who were hoping to see Slovakia's young roster earn promotion to the top division of the World Championships. Those hopes have already disappeared following two straight shutout losses at the hands of the two lowest ranked nations coming into the tournament. Now Slovakia will need a memorable performance to avoid relegation to the Division 1B tournament.

Following their 1-0 loss to host China, Slovakia fell 3-0 to the Netherlands, a team most picked for relegation heading into the tournament. Savine Wielenga scored her second of the tournament, while Esther de Jong and Bieke van Nes also scored for Holland. Kaleigh Hamers who plays for SDE in Sweden had a pair of assists while Elien Gabrielle stopped all 33 shots she faced, as Slovakia outshot Netherlands 33-19.

China stayed perfect after falling behind 2-0 to Norway early in their game. USports All-Canadian Emma Bergesen opened the scoring for Norway, followed by a goal from Millie Sirum who plays NCAA hockey for Holy Cross.

Colgate forward Mulan Kang (Kasundra Betinol) jump started China's comeback on the powerplay, which was followed just over a minute later by Minghui Kong and Xin Fang scoring to give China the 3-2 lead headed to the third period.

Norway's Emilie Kruse tied the game early in the third, but Minghui Kong replied with her second of the game to regain China's 4-3 lead. Xifang Zhang (Anna Segedi) added an insurance marker into the empty net with two minutes remaining in the game to make it 5-3, which is how the game would end.