The German national ice hockey team has reached the final Deutschland Cups narrowly lost, but sent an important sign of life for German ice hockey with a tournament that was very successful under the circumstances. Coached by Steffen Ziesche and Thomas Popiesch in the absence of national coach Toni Söderholm DEB-Selection lost to the team of the upcoming World Cup hosts Latvia in the Yayla Arena in Krefeld in an overtime thriller 2:3 (1:2, 0:0, 1:0, 0:1).
The first third already showed that the final duel would be similarly competitive as the 2-0 victory the day before. Both teams created opportunities – and after that at first DEB-Goalie Mathias Niederberger reacted strongly, Ingolstadt's Tim Wohlgemuth brought the puck towards the Latvian Goalies Arturs Silovs and Andreas Eder from Straubing (10th) steered the disc into the goal to make it 1-0. However, the guests hit back shortly before the end of the third with a double strike and turned the game around with goals from Gatis Sprukts and Frenks Razgals (both 18th).
In the second third the equalizer was in the air several times. Both Marc Michaelis, Markus Eisenschmid and Yasin Ehliz had promising chances, and they also had DEB-Selection a longer 5:3 advantage chance that remained unused. Things went better in the last 20 minutes, the pressure of DEB-Team increased and with another double majority it worked. After preparatory work by Matthias Plachta and Leon Gawanke, Michaelis (47th) put the puck into the goal with a direct shot. Despite a shooting ratio of 18:7 in the final third in favor of the DEB-The decisive goal was not chosen. Razgals finally managed to score a double goal 59 seconds before the end of extra time.
Wohlgemuth played in the final of the Deutschland Cups instead of Lukas Reichel (Eisbären Berlin). As agreed, Niederberger was in goal after Felix Brückmann from Mannheim played on Saturday. In addition to the appealing sporting level, it was also pleasing that all of the initial Corona tests were negative DEB-Home tournament also had the hoped-for end on this point.
Captain Moritz Müller: “The conclusion of the Deutschland CupOverall it's very positive, we're very happy that we were able to play and we all had a lot of fun. It also had a huge added value in terms of sport, unfortunately it wasn't quite enough to win the tournament, but we improved bit by bit in the games. It was extremely important for the players here to get competition practice at this international level. I got a lot of positive reactions that we set an example. We showed that it is possible to play.”
Markus Eisenschmid: “We wanted to win the tournament, we were close and had very good approaches. We can build on that, even if the disappointment is of course great at first. We all did a good job in the bubble and showed to the outside world that we can play even under these circumstances.”
Yannic Seidenberg: “It was good today and we improved throughout the games. There were only little things missing, overall we presented ourselves well. We made very good use of our time here to develop further. Everything was done to ensure that we all got through the tournament safely and we strictly adhered to the hygiene concept. We showed that ice hockey works and sent an important message.”
Photos: City-Press