Seattle Kraken center Matty Beniers called it, “One of the most demoralizing moments of all time.”
The “moment” happened after a game at the 2025 IIHF World Championships, jointly hosted by Denmark and Sweden. Beniers was a member of Team USA along with goalie and Seattle teammate Joey Daccord. The Americans actually had very little to be demoralized about; they won nine of ten games and captured the USA’s first stand-alone World Championship since 1933.
“During the round-robin,” Beniers recalled on the Spittin’ Chicklets podcast, “we were playing pretty well. We got shelled by Switzerland (3-0) on a back-to-back. You would have thought these guys were Wayne Gretzky out there. We were all like, ‘What is going on?’
“We were in Herning, Denmark, in the middle of nowhere. There was like one bar.” (In fairness to Herning, the municipality of 90,000 is the hometown of former Kraken Oliver Bjorkstrand and current Kraken European scout Frans Nielsen.)
“We finished the game. We didn’t have anything the next day, so we went to the center of town to eat some food, have a couple of beers. We get there, and every single Switzerland fan who was in Denmark is on this street. We walked through the middle of them. They all started doing this chant. It was so embarrassing.”
Current & Former Kraken Battled In Medal Round
Team USA recovered to beat Finland (with former Kraken Eeli Tolvanen) 5-2 in the quarterfinals. They beat Sweden (with Kraken Adam Larsson and ex-Kraken Alex Wennberg & Marcus Johansson) 6-2 in the semifinals.
That set up a gold medal rematch with Switzerland. Again, the Americans were held scoreless through regulation. But so were the Swiss.
Buffalo Sabres center Tage Thompson scored two minutes into overtime for the historic 1-0 Team USA victory.
“That was sweet. We got a little payback there,” Beniers said. “It was a great time. I would definitely go back.” Of course, unlike the Olympics, Team USA’s World Championship roster is always made up largely from players whose teams missed the NHL playoffs. So Matty would probably prefer to be otherwise occupied.
Earlier Seattle:
— Beniers Lauds Kraken Fans, Captain, Coach
