Denmark accomplished two things this afternoon with its record-setting 9-0 win over Great Britain. First, it got some breathing room from the Brits and France at the bottom end of the Group A standings. Second, it moved into fourth place with five points, tied with the U.S., and put itself in a position to think of the quarter-finals.
 
They still might be a longshot for a playoff position, but it’s not out of the question.
 
The one-sided win was the largest in Danish history at the top level. Twice previously they had scored six goals in a game (against Italy in 2008 and Slovakia in 2010), but for the first time in 110 top-level World Championship games, they hit as many as nine.

Morten Poulsen had a hat trick for the winners and Lars Eller had a goal and three assists. Sebastian Dahm stopped 19 shots for the shutout. The Danes have seven shutouts in World Championship history (top level) and Dahm now has three of those.

"Going into the game, we didn’t expect it to be easy," said Danish NHL forward Lars Eller. "It’s not easy to be the favourite, but today we handled it very well and we were clearly the better team."
 
For GB, though, times are tough and winnable games are getting scarcer. They are stuck in last place with no points to show from three games and their next two matches are against Finland and the United States. It’s looking more and more like their final game against France will determine their fate, but that’s providing France doesn’t earn more points in the next week as well.

Britain has scored but one goal in its first three games, and no team can win at that rate.

Denmark scored four power-play goals and one short-handed among its total, the former thanks to some lax discipline by their opponents.

"We had power plays the last game, and we didn’t capitalize on those, but today we were very effective," noted Lars Eller. "We made some adjustments yesterday, talked about it today so everybody knew exactly what they were doing."

Today, the Brits were the masters of their own misfortune, taking two penalties in quick succession early in the game and giving Denmark a two-man advantage for 1:40. Denmark pounced, thanks to two expert passes from their NHL stars.
 
Lars Eller made a hard pass through the slot to Jesper Jensen, and Jensen merely had to keep his stick on the ice and redirect the puck into the open side at 8:49.
 
Just 48 second later, on the back end of the two infractions, Mikkel Boedker spotted Mathias Bau in front, and Bau ripped a nice shot over Bowns’s glove.

"That was a frustrating," captain Jonathan Phillips said of his team's early play. "We started well, then I took a stupid penalty where I got my stick up, then we were unlucky enough when the puck went out to make a 5-on-3. The next thing you know, we’re down two goals and it was an uphill struggle from there."
 
Two and a half minutes later, Bowns flubbed a routine shot from Morten Poulsen, and that 3-0 lead proved to be all Denmark needed.
 
Early in the second the Danes made it 4-0 when a long low point shot from Phillip Bruggisser went all the way. That spelled the end for Bowns as coach Peter Russell decided to give his starter a rest and Jackson Whistle some playing time.
 
The move only opened the floodgates further, though. They added four more goals spread out over the period as Whistle had a tough time and his defence provided little help. In short, the team was simply outmatched.