STOCKHOLM – Coming into the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship, Denmark had set its sights high. The Danes were aiming for a possible finish in the top four of their group after the preliminary round and then squaring off in the quarter-finals. Such was the mood for a Danish team that was making its tenth consecutive top division appearance at the World Championship. A week into this tournament, however, Denmark has reduced its expectations and at this point just staying out of the final spot in their group is the goal. “There is a sense of urgency because there is a lot at stake here because we need points and we know this,” said Morten Madsen after yesterday’s game against Russia. “We have three games against teams that we’ve beaten before but we can’t take anything for granted. It’s going to be tough but it’s in our hands to avoid finishing last.” After four games, Denmark has three losses and another in overtime, totalling one point and an 8th-place standing at this point. In the new World Championship tournament format, the 8th-place finishing team in each group will be relegated. Losses to the Czech Republic, Sweden and Russia were not unexpected. The damaging game was a 4-3 overtime loss to Italy in a game that Denmark was widely expected to win. “We knew the Czech Republic, Sweden and Russia would be difficult games but the Italy game was a huge letdown and put us in a spot moving forward,” said Jannik Hansen. To close out the tournament games against Germany, Latvia and Norway looms large. “We thought we would have had three points by now,” offered Hansen. Still, we knew the last three games would be the ones we were aiming for. The real tournament begins now.” The trend for Denmark, at least in their last few games against Russia and Sweden, has been to start slow and then improve as the game moves along. To be successful the rest of the way through, the Danes acknowledge that they need to start each game strong. “We need to play high tempo,” said Hansen. ”If we think we can get an easy point here or there we will get run over. There are no easy games or soft opposition. We need to look at the positives from last night’s game against Russia.” Through it all they still feel loose and optimistic about their chances. “We feel just as confident in ourselves and in our abilities just the same as when we came into the tournament,” said Kiril Starkov. “There is more pressure though because we need to win at least one of these game to stay in the top group, but we want to win all three.” Most of the talk after the game was on taking the energy of the third period against Russian and turning that into 60 minutes of complete hockey game to game. Hansen summed it up: “The tempo in these games at first are high and a lot of our players are in top leagues, so it takes a little while to get used to it. That was the same against Russia but when we did get used to it we played much better.” “We had four lines rolling, disciplined and enjoyed good goaltending. That’s what we need going forward.” JOHN SANFUL