Fyodor Polishuk and Roman Starchenko each scored a pair of goals.

“We played well in offence and in defence. Our goalie made good saves. That’s why we won,” Starchenko said.

For Japan the game against Kazakhstan was the game of the last hope to become a factor in the medal race in Krakow. But it was a short-lived hope. Already after 2:38 Kevin Dallman brought Kazakhstan the lead when he shot the puck into the top-right corner after a pass from Konstantin Rudenko.

At 6:48 Polishuk doubled the gap with a shot from the blue line during the first power play.

With 57 seconds left in the first period, Starchenko made it 3-0 on a breakaway after defenceman Shinya Yanadori had lost the puck on the offensive blue line.

Japan head coach Mark Mahon took out goalie Yutaka Fukufuji for the second period to bring Yuto Ito and the team reacted by creating more scoring opportunities, but the middle frame ended scoreless.

At 1:16 of the third period Shuhei Kuji brought Japan back in the game – at least for a short moment – with a shot from an acute angle in pure desperation that went in. Kuji hammered the puck from between the face-off circle and the goal line on the right side after it had bounced back from the end boards following a Go Tanaka shot.

However, only 79 seconds later Starchenko made it 4-1 after successfully deking a Japanese defenceman in the right face-off circle. At 5:06 Konstantin Rudenko ended a short-pass play on a man advantage with the 5-1 goal after a nice feeder from Starchenko.