Switzerland beats Sweden 4-2 at hockey worlds

Switzerland held high-scoring Sweden in check for a 4-2 win Wednesday to stay undefeated and win its group in the preliminary round of the hockey world championship.

The Swiss will face the Czech Republic on Thursday, while Sweden will play Denmark.

Finland beat Slovakia 3-2 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to win Group C and set up a game with Latvia on Friday, while later Wednesday night Norway beat Germany 3-2 to set up a game with Canada on Thursday. Germany will play the United States that night.

Belarus, which beat France 3-1 Wednesday night, advanced to play Russia on Friday.

On Wednesday, Thierry Paterlini, Andreas Ambuhl, Thibault Monnet and Thomas Ziegler scored for Switzerland. Jonas Hiller, playing in place of Ottawa Senators goalie Martin Gerber, stopped 28 shots.

"They dictated the game from the beginning to the end," Sweden captain Kenny Jonsson said. "I hope this is a good wake-up call that we have to play 60 minutes every game. The only time we played with any desperation was in the last five minutes."

Teemu Selanne scored for Finland, along with Tuomu Ruutu and Niko Kapanen. Robert Petrovicky and Miroslav Kovacik scored for Slovakia.

Fredrik Warg and Patrik Hornqvist scored for Sweden (2-1), which had 15 goals in its previous two games. Stefan Liv had 25 saves.

New York Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist has joined Sweden and is expected to play beginning Thursday.

For the third consecutive game, undermanned Sweden got off to a slow start against arguably the toughest opponent in its group and couldn´t recover.

Paterlini scored just 48 seconds into the game, when he deked Liv on a rush. Ambuhl made it 2-0 when his shot went in over Liv´s shoulder as the goalie dropped down too quickly.

Sweden got on the board at 10:47 of the first period when Warg sent an innocent-looking shot at Hiller, who was screened on the play by Mattias Weinhandl.

Switzerland extended the lead to 3-1 at 5:23 of the third when Monnet to strip the puck from Anton Stralman, went in front of Liv and beat him with a backhand.

Hornqvist scored a short-handed goal at 19:01 to cut the Swiss lead to one, but Ziegler´s empty-netter with 7 seconds left sealed the win.

(This version corrects United States, Finland opponents.)