Two weeks before the start of the 2021 IIHF World Championships in Riga, Latvia, the German national ice hockey team is still waiting for a sense of success. National coach Toni Söderholm's team lost 1:4 (0:2, 1:0, 0:2) against Belarus in Nuremberg despite a clear increase in chances, but can take revenge in the second duel in just under 24 hours. In the ARENA NÜRNBERGER Versicherung, Nuremberg's Daniel Schmölz (38th/supernumerary) scored the only goal for the selection of the Deutscher Eishockey-Bund. German Nesterov (1st), Dmitri Snacharenko (8th) and Francis Pare were for the Belarusian team and Ilya Usow (both 60th) were successful with two empty net hits.
Felix Brückmann from Mannheim was awarded the contract and was allowed to... DEBgoal, Nuremberg's Niklas Treutle protected him as back-up. This time, Munich's Maximilian Kastner, who was recently sidelined with a slight injury, also played. Frederik Tiffels from Munich and Nicolas Krämmer from Mannheim each played their 50th international match against the Eastern European team. Krämmer also became the best after the game DEB-Actor of the day chosen.
The DEBThe team fell behind after just 54 seconds when Nesterov capitalized on a counterattack by the guests. In the 8th minute, Belarus captain Snacharenko scored with a direct shot. The German team needed some time to get into the game, but then had several opportunities to score the next goal towards the end of the third.
In the middle section, Krämmer was unlucky when he pursued energetically and the disc missed the goal line by just millimeters. Tiffels later missed a good opportunity. After Matthias Plachta hit the puck against the crossbar in the power play, Schmölz was spot on and scored his third international goal. It remained in the third third as well DEB-Selection on the trigger, Belarus goalie Alexej Kolosow made strong saves against Tiffels and also John Peterka and Korbinian Holzer. When Söderholm's team risked everything and took Brückmann out of the gate, Belarus were successful twice more.
The final test match of the World Cup preparations follows again on Saturday against Belarus (May 8th/15.45:1 p.m., live on MagentaSport and SPORT11). The immediate preparation for the tournament in Latvia begins on May 15th, with departure on May XNUMXth DEB-Selection planned to Riga. Italy will be the German team's first World Cup opponent on May 21st (15.15:1 p.m./SPORTXNUMX).
National coach Toni Söderholm: “We got off to a bad start and weren't there in terms of running and intensity in the duels. The boys improved after that, there were one or two opportunities, but if you start like that, you have to play really well afterwards to turn the game around. There are a few things we want to change for tomorrow, the result comes first and offensively we have to get more traction on goal and force the opponent deeper into the zone. There are several construction sites, but after a night’s sleep we’ll see what the recipe looks like.”
Tim Wohlgemuth: "We simply didn't have the right intensity at the beginning. After that, it got better, but we conceded two goals straight away and couldn't turn it around."
Maximilian Kastner: “We have to be there from the first second and we weren't. We have to learn from this and do better tomorrow. We were the better team after the first ten minutes and deserved one or two more goals. In the end the result was too high, we had enough chances, now we have to make the most of our chances tomorrow. A win would be very important for self-confidence, we definitely want to set an example and win the second game.”
All fotos: City-Press
Here are the statistics of the game:
https://www.gamepitch.de/playbyplay/?gameId=66f2b5ab-e106-4e15-a4fc-f6f5a1bf7c61&divisionId=7352