New Zealand beat Greece 4-3 in a crucial third division world championship game at the Dunedin Ice Stadium last night but needed a golden goal to do it.
The home side is undefeated after three matches and can seal victory with a win against Ireland on Thursday.
Having upset the Irish in an earlier match, the Greeks look like they had set their sights on New Zealand, and nearly spoiled the party for the 1000-strong crowd.
Nikolaos Papadopoulos drilled a slap shot past New Zealand goalie Zak Nothling to give Greece a 3-2 lead midway through the third period, and defended stoutly until Eaden emerged from a goalmouth scramble and smashed the puck into the back of the net with just over three minutes in ordinary time remaining.
The classy forward then capped off a good night, slotting the match-winner past the agile Ntalimpor Ploutsis.
Earlier, the Ice Blacks applied most of the pressure and created plenty of scoring opportunities, but Ploutsis repelled wave after wave with some stunning reflex saves to deny the home side.
With the frustration growing, New Zealand conceded consecutive penalties and found itself reduced to four men.
Greece took toll of the two-man advantage, with Dimitrios scoring with just under nine minutes left in the first period.
With New Zealand still a man down, Papadopoulos slammed in a second to leave the home side reeling.
New Zealand finished the period like it started, peppering the Greece goal but could not convert on a late power play and went into the break trailing 2-0.
The pattern set earlier in the match continued in the second period with the Ice Blacks enterprising but luckless.
Ploutsis remained stout in goal and it took a power play for New Zealand to posts its first goal.
Moments later the Greeks were left distraught when a goal was disallowed.
Themistoklis Lambridis broke away from the defence and beat Nothling, but the celebration turned to frustration when the officials penalised Kyriakos Adamidis for holding back a player and wiped the goal.
Georgios Kouleles could not control his disappointment and was penalised for dissent leaving Greece with two men in the penalty box.
The Ice Blacks had a two-man advantage for the next two minutes but could not capitalise.
Having defended for most of the period, Greece could not prevent Brett Speirs finding an equaliser late in the period.
In the earlier game, Turkey had a 7-4 win over Luxembourg.
The Turkish led 1-0 after a tight opening stanza but shot out to a 5-1 lead.
Luxembourg rallied in the final 20-minute period, scoring three consecutive goals to close the game to within two goals.
However, Calip Hamarat had the last say for Turkey, ramming home the game's final goal.
Alper Solak and Emrah Ozmen picked up two goals apiece for Turkey, and Volkan Toptaner and Gokturk Tasdemir scored a goal each.
Benny Welter, Robert Beran, Francois Schons and Claude Massong scored for Luxembourg.
New Zealand 4
Greece 3
