International ice hockey's biggest upsets

As usual, Canada came into the 2025 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship as one of the favorites. But Denmark, ranked 11th among men's national teams, had other ideas. Playing on home ice in Herning, Nick Olesen fired the puck past Jordan Binnington with under a minute to go in the third period to beat Canada and advance to the semifinals.

The toppling of the mighty Canadians in 2025 is not the first time the Danes have beaten one of the traditional ice hockey powers. At the 2014 World Championship, played in Belarus, Denmark held the highly favored Czech Republic to a 3-3 draw before winning the game in a penalty shootout. It didn't help them much, though, as they finished 7th in their group and failed to make the knockout stage.

Even sweeter for the Danes will have been their defeat of neighboring Sweden seven years later. Playing in Riga, Denmark goalie Sebastian Dahm held the mighty Swedes to three goals and Nick Jensen scored a hat trick to pull off a 4-3 win. While Denmark again missed the knockout stage, so did traditional hockey power Sweden.

As usual, the Czech Republic were heavy favorites when they faced Austria in the group stage of the 2022 World Championship in Tampere, Finland. A tight, defensive matched finished 1-1 in regulation time after Austria's Brian Lebler tied the score in the final minute of play. Peter Schneider (photo) scored the only goal in the penalty shootout to give the Austrians the win.

"Do you believe in miracles? Yes!" exclaimed the American commentator as the USA beat the Soviet Union at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. A team of American college players beating the Big Red Machine at the height of the Cold War was made into a Hollywood film. The college boys would make the storybook ending perfect by beating Finland in the final match of the tournament to win Olympic gold.

The 2018 Olympic tournament was the first in years not to feature NHL players. Still the traditional hockey powers remained heavily favored. Then along came Germany, who, led by rookie coach Marco Sturm, not only shocked the hockey world by knocking off Sweden in the quarterfinals, but went on to beat Canada in the semis, before settling for silver against the Olympic Athletes from Russia.

Although France suffered a severely disappointing tournament in 2025, going winless and being relegated from ice hockey's top tier, they have proved capable in the past of puling off the odd upset. In 2013, under then-coach Dave Henderson (photo), the French won two of their group-stage games in Helsinki, including a 2-1 victory over traditional powerhouse Russia.

Playing at home in Paris three years later, France had a strong tournament, including an impressive 5-1 win over Finland. Florian Hardy made 42 saves in the French goal to backstop his side to the victory. However, it wouldn't be enough to get them to the knockout phase, which they missed by a single point – behind fourth-placed Finland.

There were no celebrations before the West German players left the ice having beaten the USA 4-1 in their final game of the 1976 Olympic tournament. They returned to the dressing room convinced that they had finished fourth. However, they were soon informed by a tournament official that they had actually won bronze – as a three-way tie on points was broken by calculating the teams' goal ratios.

The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by defending gold medalists the USSR set the scene for two of the most emotional matches in history. Just months after the invasion, the two countries faced each other on the ice – twice – at the World Championship in Sweden. Czechoslovakia, who had pulled out as hosts due to the invasion, won the first game 2-0, and the second a week later 4-3.

Great Britain missed out on the 2025 Ice Hockey World Championship but will be back next year in Switzerland after having won promotion. What only the most dedicated ice hockey fan will know, is that the cradle of football actually won an Olympic gold medal in ice hockey in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936. However, several of the players were actually Canadians, who happened to hold UK passports.