Estonia beat China 5-4 to grab its second victory out of three actions in a tit for tat match at the IIHF World Championship Division I Group A tournament here on Wednesday.
Estonia had defeated France in its opener so it seemed there was no problem downing China, who lost 21 goals for just one before the game, in A Group action, but it turned out to be a fierce competition.
Four different Estonian players scored in the first 16:54 establishing a huge cushion against China's comeback. Cui Zhinan sparked China's counterattack 8:24 into the game to give the home crowd a big applause. China maintained strong offense1 in the second period scoring twice from Zhang Weiyang and Liu Henan's solo efforts on 7:05 and 8:19, but they failed to halt the Estonian offense, allowing Maskim Ivanov netting Estonia's fifth midway of the game, which proved to be decisive for the final outcome.
China's Du Chao put in the only goal in the third stanza2, but it is not enough to fetch China a victory.
Four goals in a game are China's best result in the tournament, who suffered lop-sided collapse3 in first two games.
It's a hard fight. Our defense4 is weak in the match and it's obvious that China played a better game than us, said Jorma Raisanen, Estonian head coach.
We were in the brink5 of being revered6 in the second period. China played a very high-spirited and active game.
China's head coach Xiang Shuqing told China set their target on reserving a place in Division I.
We set our eyes on not being demoted, so we need to be clear who we can defeat and who we can't. Every other team in A Group is stronger than us, so we have to give all we have for points. We think games against Estonia and Netherlands are our opportunities to make points, but it's a pity we lost at last, said Xiang.
China lost all three previous attempts and is threatened to be relegated to Division B with three games left in the round-robin tournament
