The Swedes entered the 2024 IIHF World Championship as one of the teams to beat.

Poland, on the other hand, entered the event as an unknown, perhaps as a team happy to be at its first World Championship in over 20 years.

On Sunday in Ostrava, the Swedes – featuring 18 NHLers including a plethora of the league’s stars – defeated Poland – featuring nary an NHLer – 5-1. On paper, this one shouldn’t have been this close but the Poles are beginning to look like a team that isn’t afraid of anyone.

"When you say Poland and hockey, it doesn't really go hand in hand all the time but they're a good hockey team," said Erik Karlsson of Sweden, who scored a pair of goals. "They played some good hockey, they made it hard for us and they created some good chances and capitalized on some things we didn't do so well. It was a fun game, it was a good game. We're happy with the win."

Try as they might, Polska needs to play near-perfection in order to earn points in games against tournament favourites like Sweden.

The first period was a good example. Poland didn’t play a bad period but two glaring mistakes ended up in the back of its net.

First, following a couple of failed attempts by Poland to clear the puck out of its zone, Victor Hedman – playing in his fourth Worlds – had the puck at the blueline and made a nice pass on the left side to Marcus Johansson.

The Swedish forward then took the puck to the net and tried to pass it to Andre Burakovsky but the puck never made it, instead deflecting off the stick of Polish defender Maciej Kruczek into his own net.

Less than three minutes later, Poland coughed up a turnover in its own end with the puck going right to Adrian Kempe and "Juice" (as they call him in Los Angeles) made a quick pass to Lucas Raymond – parked just on the tip of the crease – who deflected it home. It was 2-0 Sweden after one.

Poland had a powerplay midway through the second but, as was the case during its overtime loss to Latvia, Poland’s powerplay gave its opponent momentum. The Poles were unable to generate much and, soon after Sweden returned to even strength, Burakovsky found Karlsson at the top of the slot for a laser-beam of a one-timer that beat Polish goaltender David Zabolotny, post in. 

Give Poland credit. Entering the final period down three goals, the Poles could have packed it in.

Instead, they skated hard and created chances, getting rewarded with a goal 2:18 into the final frame when Alan Lyszczarczyk pounced on a Swedish turnover and initially lost control of the puck in alone on Filip Gustavsson. Lyszczarczyk corrected his mistake when he once again got control of the puck behind the Swedish net and then banked the puck in off the back of Gustavsson’s leg.

"Everyone knows what we came here for," said Lyszczarczyk, who said he was impressed with his group's effort. "We want to stay in this group for next year. We have a couple more games that are important for us so we need to make sure we keep playing like this."

The gap between the teams was too much and Sweden took back control after that goal.

Burakovsky made it 4-1 with a powerplay goal at 14:27 and, less than a minute later and still on the powerplay, Sweden went ahead 5-1 when dynamic duo on D Hedman and Karlsson connected for a beautiful one-timer. The goal was Karlsson’s second of the game.

Sweden moves to 2-0-0-0 at Worlds as it attempts to reach the podium at Worlds for the first time since 2018, when it won the second of its back-to-back gold medals. Poland falls to 0-0-1-1 with an overtime loss and regulation loss. The Swedes play Germany on Monday and Poland is off until Tuesday, when it faces France in  a huge game for both teams.

"We know we have to get points from this game," said Polish forward Pawel Zygmunt. "France is a good team but if we can play well like we did against Latvia with good defence ... it will be good."