David Pastrnak Lifts Czechia To 2024 World Hockey Championship Win

The party in Prague might last all summer.

On Sunday, David Pastrnak broke a scoreless tie with 10:47 remaining in the third period as his Czech team faced off against Switzerland in the gold-medal game at the 2024 IIHF World Championship.

David Kampf added an empty-net tally with 19 seconds remaining in regulation time, and Lukas Dostal made 31 saves for his third shutout of the tournament.

Coming into the tournament as the eighth-ranked country in the hockey world, the Czechs’ last gold medal at the men’s top level came back in 2010. Since then, they’ve won bronze three times — in 2011, 2012 and 2022.

Nine years after a tournament attendance record was set in Prague and Ostrava in 2015, the same two Czech cities played host in 2024. This time, even more impassioned fans came out, raising the record by more than 50,000 to 797,727.

It was reported that 76 percent of the nation’s 10.7 million residents tuned in to watch the Czechs’ 7-3 win over Sweden in Saturday’s semifinal. Sunday’s gold-medal game could end up even higher, after businesses closed early in order to ensure that everyone had a chance to watch.

Though they didn’t suffer a regulation loss in the tournament’s preliminary round, the Czechs went into the playoffs in third place in Group A, thanks to a 2-1 shootout loss to the second-place Swiss on May 13 and a 4-3 overtime defeat at the hands of first-place Canada on May 21.

With a squad made up of players from both the Czech professional league and the NHL, general manager Petr Nedved made some key additions to his forward group as players were eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Martin Necas of the Carolina Hurricanes joined the roster on May 18, followed by the Boston Bruins’ Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha on May 20.

It was the second tournament appearance for Necas, 25, who produced a goal and six assists in his five games. And while Zacha and Pastrnak added just one goal each, both were difference-makers. Along with Pastrnak’s tournament winner, Zacha’s tally was the only goal of the game in the Czechs’ 1-0 quarterfinal win over the United States on Thursday.

This year marked the first World Championship appearance for Zacha, 27, and the fifth for Pastrnak, 28.

“This is always so special. [The tournament] was at home, and I’ve never played at home,” Pastrnak said. “It would be really hard for me to say no. Obviously, when I’m healthy, I will never say no to the national team.”

Two Czechs in very different stages of their careers were named to the media all-star team. Team captain Roman Cervenka, 38, is the last active member of the Czechs’ 2010 gold-medal-winning team. And 23-year-old netminder Lukas Dostal, who also received the IIHF Directorate Award as best goaltender, just completed his rookie NHL season with the Anaheim Ducks.

The busiest goaltender in the tournament, Dostal allowed 13 goals on 213 shots over eight games to finish with a save percentage of .939 and goals-against average of 1.58.

Looking for their country’s first-ever world championship gold, Switzerland’s Kevin Fiala and Roman Josi were also both named media all-stars and Directorate Award winners as top forward and top defenseman, respectively.

Fiala and Josi joined the team after their NHL squads, the Los Angeles Kings and Nashville Predators, were knocked out of the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. With seven goals and 13 points in eight games, Fiala was also named tournament MVP.

In Sunday’s bronze-medal game, Sweden pulled away late in the third period to take down the defending champions from Canada by a score of 4-2. It’s the first medal for the Swedes since they won gold in Denmark in 2018, but the rise of the Czechs and Swiss bumps them down one spot to seventh in a crowded section of the 2024 IIHF World Ranking.

With anticipation building for the return of NHL players to the Winter Olympics in 2026, seeing the Czechs and the fifth-ranked Swiss compete for world championship gold is not ideal for the NHL, which chose to limit its lead-up tournament to just four teams.

While no formal announcement has yet been made about venues or tournament structure, these world rankings won’t change before the ‘4 Nations Face-Off’ features teams from Canada (No. 1), Finland (No. 3), the United States (No. 6) and Sweden (No. 7) in February of 2025.

That being said, it’s a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison. It’s expected that the ‘4 Nations’ rosters will be built exclusively from NHL rosters, like we saw with the 2016 World Cup of Hockey. From a numbers standpoint, the Czechs barely have enough players in the NHL to ice a full roster, and the Swiss would fall well short.

For the moment, the world championship result underscores that anything could happen in Italy in 2026.