Thomas Raffl produced an individual moment of brilliance to give the Austrian side the lead in the first period at the Palace of Sports.

They were not in front for long, however, as Keegan Dansereau responded shortly after to level the contest at 1-1.

A scoreless second stanza made for a fascinating finale and Austria managed to edge ahead in the third through Fabio Hofer.

Victory was then sealed three minutes later when a speculative effort from Dominique Heinrich found its way through traffic into the net.

"We really wanted to win this game," said Hofer. 

"We made too many mistakes in the first two periods, we have to improve that, we need to have less bad passes in our own zone. 

"We have to play like in the third period.

"It was important that we finally scored a power-play goal -  that’s important in such a tournament."

The result leaves both teams on a one win and one loss record, with Olympic host nation South Korea in pole position in the round robin group.

In Division IB, hosts Britain, Lithuania and Japan all claimed their second victories of the event at the SSE Arena in Belfast.

Britain were again in fine form in front of their home crowd as they dispatched Estonia 5-1, while Lithuania thrashed The Netherlands 8-0.

In the first match of the day, Japan edged Croatia 4-2.

The top two teams from Group A in the round robin tournament taking place in the Ukrainian capital will progress to the 2018 edition of the top tournament in the sport, which will be hosted in Denmark.

The lowest ranked team from Group A will be relegated to B, while the last placed country from the latter will head to Division IIA.