Mika Zibanejad Calls World Championship In Sweden A Memory Of A Lifetime

The 2025 IIHF Men’s World Championship ended on a bitter-sweet note for Mika Zibanejad.

Team Sweden suffered a crushing 6-2 defeat against Team USA on Saturday afternoon, decimating their dreams of winning the gold medal in front of their hometown fans.

However, not everything was lost. The players quickly had to shift their focus on the bronze-medal match against Team Denmark and Zibanejad admitted it wasn’t easy. 

“It was obviously tough, it is a tough reset from yesterday after being so disappointing,” Zibanejad said. “Just the way we played yesterday, it wasn’t hard to have a mindset of we have to play better and we owe it to ourselves. I thought we ended in the best way we could with the situation being.”

Sweden responded with a 6-2 win of their own on Sunday over Denmark to capture the bronze medal and Zibanejad even scored the final goal to put the icing on top of the cake.

You don’t get the opportunity to play in a tournament of this magnitude in front of your hometown fans very often, so Zibanejad cherished every moment of it.

The 32-year-old talked about his experience with passion and pure happiness. 

“It’s going to be a memory with me for a lifetime,” Zibanejad said about playing in Stockholm, Sweden for the World Championship. “Even though we didn’t win gold, we got the bronze medal. It’s a medal and we got to do it in front of our families, our friends, our fans. 

“People that might have never watched hockey before, hopefully got some more hockey fans in Sweden from it. It’s a memory that I’ll bring with me for a very long time.”

Zibanejad has now played at the 4 Nations Face-Off and World Championship. Is the 2026 Winter Olympic Games next on his international hockey agenda?

That’s something that he hasn’t been thinking about a whole lot as of right now. 

“It's been an honor, as always, to play for your country, represent your country, but now I'm going to take some time off and rest, and then I'll think about hockey later,” said Zibanejad.