Iceland won their second IIHF pre-qualifying group match for Beijing 2022 in Romania today and face the hosts in the final group match tomorrow ©IIHF

Iceland maintained their winning progress today in the second round of the International Ice Hockey Federation’s (IIHF) pre-qualifying series for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing.

Having won their opening Group K match at Romania’s Brasov Arena - 9-4 against first round qualifiers Kyrgyzstan, Iceland followed up with a 5-0 win over Israel.

In tomorrow’s final group match round they are due to face the hosts, who built on a 15-0 win over Israel by beating Kyrgyzstan 18-2 tonight.

In the opening match of Group L, being staged at Barcelona’s Palau de Gel, The Netherlands beat Mexico 17-1.

The hosts followed up with a comfortable victory over the other European first round qualifiers, Chinese Taipei.

Sibak’s Zibel Arena, in Croatia, is hosting Group M, and Serbia got the action off to a decisive start tonight as they beat Turkey 8-3.

The hosts followed up with a 12-1 victory over Bulgaria.

Serbian captain Nemanja Vučurević was among the scorers in an 8-3 victory over Turkey in the opening Group M match in the IIHF's second round of European pre-qualifying for the Beijing 2022 Games ©IIHF
Serbian captain Nemanja Vučurević was among the scorers in an 8-3 victory over Turkey in the opening Group M match in the IIHF's second round of European pre-qualifying for the Beijing 2022 Games ©IIHF

As with the first-round groups, the winners will be decided on a round-robin basis - due to conclude on Sunday (December 15) - and will proceed to the third of the four scheduled pre-qualification stages.

The three qualifiers will be determined in four stages of the Olympic pre-qualification, culminating with groups in Slovakia, Latvia and Norway scheduled to be held between August 27 and 30 next year.

The top-eight nations in the 2019 IIHF men's world rankings have automatically qualified for Beijing 2022.

They are Canada, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Czech Republic, the United States, Germany and Switzerland.

Together with host China and the three qualifiers, they will be seeded according to the 2020 IIHF world rankings.