German selection completed first unit after day off / focus on game against Japan
The tension is rising, the countdown has begun: After a day off, the German national ice hockey team got back to work on Tuesday and completed their first session on the ice in the Arena Riga. National coach Marco Sturm asked his team onto the ice for around an hour and a half. The German selection completed the exercises with great concentration in the 10.000-seater Riga Arena, which of course still seemed deserted two days before the start of the Olympic qualification.
That will change on Thursday. The national team is playing the opening game of the important four-nation tournament against Japan (live on SPORT1). Then the ranks will probably not be completely full, but that will hardly play a role for the sports management of the German selection. Rather, the focus is on the next opponent, who recently prepared for three weeks in Germany and tested against DEL teams there. Greg Thomson, an old acquaintance of his, is on the gang there.
On Tuesday evening, however, the coaching team will first take a look at the Latvians' only test game against Denmark to get an initial overview of Sunday's opponents. This is particularly necessary because the hosts made a change behind the boards at surprisingly short notice: national coach Leonids Beresnevs resigned on Sunday. For personal reasons, as they said. His successor is Haralds Vasiljevs, the father of DEL crack Herberts Vasiljevs from Krefeld. It remains to be seen to what extent this will affect the home team's tactics.
But Latvia is still a dream of the future. “We certainly won’t be thinking about Austria and Latvia before the Japan game,” goalkeeper Philipp Grubauer recently emphasized. This means that the players just concentrate on the task ahead. Which is also important, because recently in Germany the Asians showed quite good approaches and only lost by a small margin against some highly bet DEL clubs. Captain Marcel Goc made it clear: “Japan is an unpleasant opponent. Anyone who thinks that you can just play a game like this in a relaxed manner is seriously mistaken.”