According to the poll held at the end of April by media, market and public opinion research company TNS Latvia, most of Latvia's population that will be watching the 2006 World Ice Hockey Championship expect the Latvian national team to make it to the championship's quarterfinals.
However, currently championship's favorite is Sweden - 15 percent of Latvian residents expecting Swedes to win the world champion's title this year.
About 63 percent think that Latvia would get to the quarterfinals of the championship and 21 percent are great optimists, hoping that the Latvian national team would be able to win a medal on their home turf.
Approximately the same percentage of Latvian ice-hockey fans believe that Latvian team would finish the championship in the traditional range of 9th to 12th place and stay in Group A also for the next year.
And only 5 percent of respondents are pessimists and think that Latvia will have to fight very hard to keep its place in Group A.
Overall, there is no general agreement among Latvians about the likely winner of the championship. Sweden, tipped as the favorite with 15 percent of votes, is followed by Canada with 12 percent. An optimistic 11 percent hope that the Latvian national team would win the championship, while 10 percent see Czechs as potential winners.
Russia's chances to win the world championship are also pretty high - 8 percent of respondents think that Russian team might win the champion's title.
