HELSINKI – Oh la la, what a game, with ups and downs and heroes and villains. In the end, France pulled the biggest upset of the tournament when it beat Switzerland for the first time in 12 years, 4-2.

Teddy and Stéphane da Costa scored a goal each for France, Cristobal Huet made 41 saves.

Switzerland outshot France 43-27, but Huet was as good as the French needed him to be, and France scored two powerplay goals in the third period when Goran Bezina received a five-minute major for checking to the head.

"We played a solid game, Huet was huge in the net, and we knew we'd need a big performance from him to be able to win tonight. We believed that we could win this game," said France's Baptiste Amar.

"They got a five-minute power play and scored two goals, and we couldn't react. They just sat back. Their goalie played unbelievably well. You have to give them credit. We didn't play well enough tonight," said Swiss captain Mark Streit.

Cristobal Huet sure knew what to expect. After all, he just finished his second season with Fribourg-Gottéron in the Swiss league where the Chicago Blackhawks loaned him after their 2010 Stanley Cup win.

"I think a Swiss newspaper even wrote today about a Swiss goalie playing for France. He's married to a Swiss, and lives there, so it was a special game for [Cristobal]," Amar said.

It was France who took the lead in the game on power play. Yohann Auvitu, Laurent Meunier and Kévin Hecquefeuille made a nice tic-tac-toe play which set Auvitu up to fire a slapshot from the point. Yorick Treille made sure that Tobias Stephan in Switzerland’s goal didn’t see Auvitu’s shot fly by him at 17:11.

In the second period, even if Switzerland started to control the game more and more, the events flowed from one end to the other fairly evenly, and France had their chances. Everything came to a head once the game had reached the halfway point.

First France took a two-goal lead when Teddy da Costa slammed a loose puck that was bouncing in front of the net after Charles Bertrand’s wraparound attempt turned into a pass when Stéphane got a piece of it. Da Costa’s wrister went in and out - at 12:44 - so quickly that the goal had to be reviewed on video.

France had the momentum on its side. For half a minute.

Damien Brunner, the Swiss league’s scoring champion, scored Switzerland’s first goal exactly 30 seconds after the French 2-0 goal. He got the puck off an offensive zone faceoff, and fired a wrist shot that got deflected past Huet off Amar’s skate.

And then Switzerland tied it.

Brunner skated around the French zone, around the tight French defence keeping him on the outside, and fired a quick shot off a give-and-go with Kevin Romy to tie the game with 4:56 remaining in the second period, and only two minutes and twenty seconds after the French 2-0 goal.

France got another chance to get back into the game when Goran Bezina received a game penalty for checking to the head after he ran over Anthony Guttig. And they took it.

First, Laurent Meunier’s slapshot from the blueline caught Stephan off guard at 6:21 to give the lead back to France.

And then, with still 3:16 remaining in Bezina’s penalty, the French power play opened up the Swiss penalty killing box with a couple of quick passes. First Baptiste Amar to Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, then Bellemare to Stéphane da Costa, who one-timed the puck in from the bottom of the left faceoff circle.

With two minutes remaining, France got into penalty trouble, giving Switzerland a 5-on-3 powerplay, but France killed both penalties, and started celebrations.

"They had even a six-on-three in the end. Guys were blocking shots, and Huet was amazing. That's just a team working hard, doing things that may not be so pretty but that got us the win," said Amar who played almost 26 minutes in the game.

"I'm getting older and playing that much doesn't help. Joking aside, since I missed last year's tournament, I'm so happy to be here," he added.

For Switzerland, the route to the playoff stage got a little longer.

"It's a tough loss to swallow. I'm not thinking about the quarter-finals. I'm thinking about winning a hockey game tomorrow," Streit said.

France hadn't beaten Switzerland in a World Championship (and any) game since 2000. That time, as today, the final score was 4-2.

RISTO PAKARINEN