With only a few days to go before the 2009 IIHF World Championship starts in Switzerland, four teams have gathered in Grenoble (France) getting sharped for the tournament. Today, Norway beat  Austria 3-0 and tallied their first victory in the IHWC preparations. Belarus beat France 2-1 after shootout.

Austria – Norway 0-3 (0-1, 0-1, 0-1)
19 April 2009, Grenoble
0-1 18:04 Tore Vikingstad (Patrick Thoresen)
0-2 36:40 Marius Holtet (Morten Ask, Mats. Z. Olsen)
0-3  45:17 Per-Åge Skrøder (Tore Vikingstad)

AUT: B. Brückler, D. Werenka, G. Unterluggauer, M. Trattnig, M. Koch, P: Schellander; J. Rebek, A. Lakos, C. Harand, D. Schuller, O. Setzinger – R. Lukas, P. Lakos, M. Raffl, R. Kaspitz, G.Baumgartner, M. Altmann, M. Oraze, H. Ofner, D. Oberkofler.
NOR: P. Grotnes, A. Myrvold, M. Trygg, P.Å. Skrøder, T. Vikingstad, P. Thoresen; T. Jakobsen, J. Holøs, M. Holtet, M. Ask, M. Z. Aasen, L. E. Lund, J. Kaunismäki, L. E. Spets, M. Hansen, A. Bastiansen; A. Bonsaksen, P. Lorentzen, M. Røymark, K. Forsberg. M. Ylven.

With the exception of the first 10 minutes of  the second period, Norway dominated the first game in Grenoble. The team created a lot of chances and could have won bigger if they had been more efficient. Bernd Brückler also played a big role reducing the scorings with several spectacular saves.  The topline with Skrøder - Vikingstad-Thoresen was very sharp and could be the Norway's biggest asset as the team will attempt to repeat last year's surprising journey to the quarterfinals in the World Championship.

France – Belarus 1-2 SO (0-0, 0-1, 1-0, 0-0, 0-1)
19 April 2009, Grenoble, Att: 2,800
0-1 27:47 Yaroslav Chupris (Aleksander Makritsky)
1-1 43:23 Luc Tardif (Sacha Treille, Jonathan Zwikel)
1-2 65:00 Dmitri Meleshko SO
FRA 6x2, BLR 4x2

FRA: E. Ferhi, V. Bachet (2), B. Quessandier, B. Amar, M. Mille, T. Roussel, A. Manavian (2), K. Igier; Y. Treille, L. Meunier (2), F. Rozenthal, J. Zwikel (2), L. Tardif, D. Raux, J. Desrosiers, A. Lussier, L. Gras, P.-E. Bellemare (2), S. Treille (2), K. Hecquefeuille, D. Fleury.

BLR:  V. Koval, I. Usenko, A. Makritsky, A. Ryadinski, D. Korobov, A. Antonou, V. Kostyuchenok, A. Basko (2), A. Mikkavel, O. Antonenko, A. Kulakov, E. Kovyrshin, A. Ugarov, D. Meleshko, S. Demagin, K. Koltsov, A. Borovkov, Y. Chupris (2), A. Kalyuzhny (2), D. Dudik (2).

In the IIHF World Championship preparations, Belarus have so far played two games vs Poland and a couple of test games vs KHL teams (Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk and Spartak Moscow). This was the team's first real test game. The game was tight, but Belarus came out victorious after the shootout.