24.08.2016/18/3 - Successful start: The U2 national team played its first game at the DEL Junior Cup in Mannheim on Wednesday evening with 0:1 (2:0; 0:1; 0:0; 1:0; XNUMX:XNUMX) nP against won the HC Energie Karlovy Vary and has now moved to second place in the “Goc” group.
From a German perspective, however, the match started somewhat bumpily: The team of U18 national coach Steffen Ziesche did not find their way into the game as desired in the first half. Some inconsistencies in the game system and the running routes continued throughout the initial phase and so the DEB-Selection was down 0-1 after just four minutes.
In the second third, however, the coaching team's instructions were implemented much better. Louis Brune scored the deserved equalizer midway through the game. Just under a minute before the second break, Tom-Eric Bappert even managed to take the lead 2-1.
While the German selection lost the thread a little after the last change, the Czechs increasingly pressed more on goal and were able to overcome Marc Arnsperger in the German goal for a second time. With the score 2-2, the game went into extra time, so the penalty shootout had to bring the decision. Thanks to keeper Arnsperger's brilliant deeds and Dominik Bokk's winning goal, the U18 won the game after a whopping 25 penalties.
U18 national coach Ziesche was happy about the double point win, but drew attention to the lack of consistency: “You could see today that we have only been on the ice together for a total of 90 minutes so far. Although we were superior to the Czechs, we didn't implement and follow through with our system and game plan consistently enough. Today against the young eagles we want to concentrate more on that and appear significantly improved in all aspects.”
The match against the Jungadler Mannheim is scheduled for today at 19.30 pm. A live stream will be available at www.sportdeutschland.tv give. After their 1-2 defeat in the opening game on Tuesday, the hosts had no game yesterday and are currently in third place in the “Team Goc” group.