Mirco Mueller and prospect Gilles Senn (third goalie) were part of Team Switzerland that narrowly lost in the championship game to Team Sweden in a shootout and earned a silver medal. Keith Kinkaid, Will Butcher, Blake Coleman and Brian Gibbons represented Team USA, who defeated Canada 4-1 to take home the bronze.
In the gold medal game, the Swiss took the lead late in the first (Nino Niederreiter - Minnesota), but Sweden scored the equalizer less than 80 seconds later (Gustav Nyqvist - Detroit). Switzerland again took the lead early in the second (Timo Meier - San Jose) before the Swedes tied it up again (Mika Zibanejad -New York Rangers) with just over five minutes left in the period. Sweden pushed hard in the third, but the Swiss defense was up to the task and weathered the storm sending the game into a 20 minute session of 4-on-4 overtime. The Swiss had the better of the chances in the extra frame, but like last year, this championship game would be decided by a shootout.
Sven Andrighetto (Colorado) scored in the first round to give the Swiss the lead, but Oliver Ekman-Larsson (Arizona) scored in the third round to tie it back up and in the fourth round, Filip Forsberg (Nashville) gave Sweden their first lead in the game and the only one they'd need to win the gold medal.
"It sucks a lot right now. It really stings losing like that," Mueller said after the game, pausing to try and collect his thoughts. "I'm just tired right now. I think we battled hard all game long, all tournament long. I think it's been a lot of hockey for a lot of guys and right now it just sucks having silver after being so close.
"Even going up in the shootout, yeah," he paused again shaking his head as he watched the replay in his mind. "Just a tough loss all around. I'm really proud of the guys, obviously. It will mean something, I think, when a couple weeks pass by here and I get to reflect a little bit on the last three weeks, but right now, this sucks."
Mueller finished the tournament averaging over 20 minutes a game and with a goal and five assists for six points in 10 games.
"Our goaltending was outstanding throughout the tournament. We kept it simple. We tried to use our strengths and use our skating. I think we have a lot of fast players and skilled ones too and scored some sick goals," Mueller said of his team's strategy. "I had a great time. Tonight stinks a bit, obviously, but once you look at the bigger picture, I think it's huge for Swiss hockey. This doesn't happen a lot where we go to the final or win a medal, but right now the disappointment kind of overtakes all the [happy] feelings."
Switzerland has never won this event and only has one other medal - a silver earned in another championship loss to Sweden in 2013 - since 1953 when they earned a bronze.
USA earned their third bronze medal in six years and just their sixth since 1962. After the game Butcher said how proud he was of the team and gave a lot of credit to Kinkaid who played in all but one game (against Korea) and finished the tournament with a .912 save percentage and 2.29 goals against average including two shutouts and 24 saves in the bronze medal game.
Butcher had a goal and two assists averaging over 20 minutes a game. Coleman had a goal and an assist averaging 13 minutes and Gibbons was held without a point, but was very effective in a shut down role on the fourth line with a lot of time on the penalty kill.
