The wait is finally over! For national coach Toni Söderholm and the German national ice hockey team, the 15 IIHF World Championships in Riga, Latvia, begin on Friday (15:1 p.m., live on Sport2021) against Italy. The team has been on site since last Saturday and had to spend two days in individual quarantine until they were able to complete their first training session on the ice on Tuesday. The tension is great, but the anticipation is even greater because the selection of the Deutscher Eishockey-Bund is longing for the first World Cup game in 729 days.
The Italian team is starting the tournament this week with a severely weakened squad. Due to several positive COVID-19 cases, the team has already had to cancel three preparation games against Switzerland and Austria. Many young players are now moving up and getting a chance. Well-known names in Germany are Peter Spornberger, Alex Trivellato, Stefano Giliati, as well as Alex Petan and Marco Rosa. The former spent this season in the DEL2 with EHC Freiburg, who made it to the semi-finals of the second best German league, but lost there. Bietigheim Steelers In the end, they lost 2-3 in the series. So far they have met each other DEB-Selection and the Italian team three times at a World Cup (2001, 2012 and 2017). Here the German team was able to clearly prevail in the last two encounters.
Less than 20 hours later, the second game for them follows DEB-Selection: Norway will face national coach Toni Söderholm's team on Saturday (11:15 a.m., live on Sport1). This completes the DEBselection had their first double game day at the start of the IIHF World Championship. The last match between these opponents took place on May 6, 2018 at the World Championship in Denmark. At that time, Anders Bastiansen secured his Norwegian team a 5:4 victory after a penalty shootout. This year's Norwegian squad also includes a PENNY DEL finalist in Mathis Olimb, who will face his Wolfsburg club colleague Dominik Bittner in this tournament. And Moritz Seider will also be celebrating a reunion in this match. Erlend Lesund, who played alongside the German defender at Rögle BK last season, is part of the Scandinavian team.
Moritz Mueller: “It is always an honor to play for Germany and come to a World Cup. You are one of the best in your country and can compete with the best. I know the guys who are here feel this way. It's an award and that's why we're here. It wasn't an easy year, but we fought to be able to play because we knew how important it was to be able to play hockey at all. It's true that everything is a little different. But at the very end, when it starts, the best Italians are playing against the best Germans and I think that we as a team shouldn't get too caught up in all that, because that shouldn't serve as an excuse or excuse. We have a responsibility to perform as a team.”
Moritz Seider: “Every sportsman or athlete goes into competition and wants to win. I think otherwise we wouldn't all be here and we would be doing something wrong. We all have huge goals, but of course we don’t want to put the fun in the background, we want it to be present.”