Defenceman Kevin Dallman and forward Vadim Krasnoslobodtsev each had one goal and an assist, Talgat Zhailauov had three assist points. Kazakhstan outshot the Hungarians by 22-12.

“It was a good game. I liked it. We scored five goals, nobody was hurt. We had a good start in which we were lucky and after four goals in two periods it was game over,” Kazakhstan head coach Andrei Nazarov said.

The game started perfect for Kazakhstan from the very beginning. Attila Orban was assessed a penalty for tripping and Hungarian goalie Bence Balizs caused another one for delaying the game.

After 103 seconds of play Konstantin Rudenko scored on the rebound after a blocked slapshot from Roman Savchenko when the Kazakhs were playing 5-on-3.

At 5:28 Rudenko had another chance on a breakaway but didn’t bring the puck past Hungarian netminder Balizs and got a penalty for charging him. It was one of the few possibilities offered to the Hungarians to come close to a game-tying goal.

“I think that not getting off to a very good start did not help us. If you take too many penalties you cannot persevere with the game. We were lucky we were down only 2-0 after the first period because they had great opportunities,” Hungary coach Rich Chernomaz said.

“They were very, very disciplined positionally not to give us any quality opportunities at all. Today we had no chance to win this game.”

The Kazakhs also had more puck possession and chances in the second period and were patiently waiting for their opportunities. At 5:50 Alexei Vorontsov had his stick on the right spot in front of the net when he redirected the puck after a long horizontal pass from Mikhail Panshin. At 12:12, after a cross-check from Daniel Kiss, Dallman made it 3-0 with a shot from the face-off dot on the ensuing power play.