MILAN — Timo Meier scored twice in the third period, Leonardo Genoni stopped all 27 shots he faced and Switzerland opened the men's hockey tournament at the Olympics with a 4-0 shutout of France on Thursday.
J.J. Moser, who plays for Tampa Bay in the NHL also scored three minutes in, beating Washington goaltending prospect Antoine Keller clean off the rush from the left faceoff circle. That gave Switzerland a very early multigoal lead after Damien Riat scored 55 seconds into the game.
The goals by Meier, who's with New Jersey, put the game out of reach after he and his teammates tilted the ice toward Keller. With a boisterous contingent of fans in attendance, Switzerland outshot France 43-27 and sent them home happy.
A part of that was the play in net of Genoni, the 38-year-old who backstopped his country on an improbable run to the final at the world championships last spring before losing 1-0 to the U.S. in overtime. Genoni was tournament MVP with a 0.99 goals-against average and .953 save percentage.
Genoni is off to a perfect start in Milan by beating France. Switzerland next plays Olympic favorite Canada on Friday.
''Obviously a big team coming up," forward Nino Niederreiter said. "We're going to try our best to poke the bear a little bit and see if we can go from there.''
The U.S. plays its first game in Milan on Thursday night against Latvia, with Connor Hellebuyck set to start. Canada faces Czechia before that, with Germany against Denmark across town at the secondary arena.
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