Kazakhstan won gold and a return back to the Elite Division after a three year gap after beating Slovenia 2-1 on the last day of the Division 1 Group A World Championships in Vilnius.

Kazakhstan won the promotion deciding game against Slovenia in a tight 2-1 battle that belied the long periods of domination that they had in this game.

From the very start, Kazakhstan looked the better team. Significantly more deadly going forward and winning more than their fair share of battles in the corners and along the boards.

After a stuttering start thanks to Milovanovic cutting the face of Belyayev requiring a significant amount of blood to be scraped to the ice, Solarev's opening goal in the 9th minute had a sense of inevitability about it. The fact that there weren't more was the result of some seat of the pants defending by Slovenia and their netminder, Hocevar.

Slovenia had their own chances, but none seemed to stir the same sense of panic. Kuznetsov was able to much more calmly bat away the more speculative shots. But, at the other end of the ice, Kazakhstan's strong counter attacking was kicking off all sorts of mayhem for the Slovenians.

The second period was very much more of the same. Solarev, one of the tournament's standout players doubled the score at half-way after converting from the even more impressive Krasnoslobotsov and Slovenia were starting to look out of it.

And yet, despite dominating the period with a 13-4 shot advantage, Kazakhstan couldn't take it any further. 

Even the third period didn't bring any change to the flow of the game. As the clock counted down, Slovenia even resorted to arguing amongst themselves as to who was responsible for the latest Kazakhstan counter-attack.

And then, at 56:11, it all changed. Sivic managed to score through Antipin. Slovenia threw everything at the Kazakhstan net for the remaining 4 minutes, certainly with more intensity than they had shown so far in the tournament. And they came very close to managing it when they hit the post with just 23 seconds left and then missed an all but empty net in the dying seconds.

Not the classic game that we had all hoped for, but that counted for nought as the Kazakhstanis stormed the ice after the final whistle. While Slovenia will be bitterly disappointed at losing out in such a tight scoreline, there can be little doubt that Kazakhstan were the class act in this tournament.