Germany finished the World Cup in Herning in eleventh place / Olympic heroes urgently need a break
Ice hockey wasn't quite over yet. When the German national team came back from dinner on Tuesday evening after the 0:3 defeat against Canada and strolled through the city to end the tournament with a beer, the focus was suddenly back on ice hockey. The team watched the decisive match between hosts Denmark and Latvia on the big screen together. The result is known: after the 0:1 defeat, Denmark was also eliminated from the preliminary round.
So no quarter-finals for the hosts. "It's a shame," said Patrick Hager, who would have liked the home team to win. "We know what kind of euphoria that can trigger in our own country," said the striker, recalling the previous year in Cologne, when they themselves managed to reach the round of the last eight against Latvia. Germany also made it to the quarter-finals in St. Petersburg in 2016. Not this time. They finished eleventh after the 2018 tournament.
"We knew it would be difficult," said Koribinan Holzer about what had been achieved. Indeed, Marco Sturm had repeatedly stressed long before this year's World Cup that things could not continue to improve. Especially not after the Olympic silver medal. Given the major restructuring of the squad, this was no great surprise for the experts. After all, ten men were on the ice for the first time at a World Championship. Internally, the goal was formulated rather defensively anyway.
The national coach put it this way: "We didn't have the start we wanted in the tournament and dropped a few points. Although we weren't quite the German team that played against Finland, we still had the opportunity to take more with us." But we didn't take advantage of these opportunities, he added. Sturm was honest: "That's why it's not entirely undeserved that we didn't make it to the quarter-finals."
In any case, the new players had to be integrated and used to the system. Ten players made their World Cup debut. It is understandable that the ambitions cannot be set high. Sturm tends to see the bigger picture, think outside the box and think medium-term. "But," noted superstar Leon Draisaitl, "there are still some nations better than us and that will remain the case." For Germany, the aim in the coming years is to establish itself directly behind the top nations and perhaps make one or two pinpricks.
Now it's summer break. Yannic Seidenberg summed up what everyone was thinking. "I can't watch any more ice hockey for now. I won't be putting my skates back on until August." The ten Olympic heroes especially urgently need a break. 2018 was too intense, especially for the DEL finalists, who came to the World Cup with seven finals under their belts. They deserve it.