U18 national team at the DEL Junior Cup 2017 in Mannheim

Sturm and Künast on the boards / Ilpo Kauhanen new U18 goalkeeping coach

International club teams at the start of the season: The U18 national team will take part in the DEL Junior Cup 22 in Mannheim from August 27.08.2017nd to 2017th, XNUMX. Like last season, it hits DEB-Selection in the Baden-Württemberg metropolitan region on the Rhine-Neckar is facing a top-class international field of participants. In addition to the young eagles and the German U18 selection, teams from Russia, Finland, the Czech Republic and Canada are also taking part.

At the first tournament of the season, the U18 team will be led exceptionally by national coach Marco Sturm and U20 national coach Christian Künast. “Christian and I will coach the U18s at this tournament, as Frank Fischöder is involved with the young eagles at the Junior Cup,” explains Sturm. Ilpo Kauhanen will be the new goalkeeping coach for the U18 national team in Mannheim for the first time at the DEL Junior Cup. In addition to his work as a goalkeeping coach, the 43-year-old native of Finland will be the Schwenninger Wild Wings accompany the U18 national team in the upcoming 2017/18 season. During his active career, Kauhanen played in the DEL for Kassel, Hannover, Mannheim, Duisburg and Ingolstadt, among others, and he has been part of the coaching team in Schwenningen since 2015. “We are very much looking forward to working with Ilpo. “He is an experienced goalkeeper who knows German ice hockey both from his active career and from a coaching perspective and whose professional expertise will help us in the young talent area,” said Sturm. “A big thank you goes to them Schwenninger Wild Wings, who were very cooperative and the DEB provide staff support in this matter.”

The DEBThe selection will face HC Energie Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic) and St. Andrew's College from Canada in the "Team Hecht" group. The Jungadler Mannheim, Helsingfors IFK (Finland) and Lokomotive Jaroslav (Russia) will face each other in the "Team Goc" group. "It's a demanding field of participants and playing against club teams is always different than playing against selection teams. But primarily we don't want to look too much at the results, but rather see how the players cope with the game system and how they do under competitive conditions," said the national coach.

Schedule / preliminary round:

You can find information about the rest of the schedule and the tournament itself here

Squad: