After a narrow defeat at the 2021 IIHF World Championship, the German national ice hockey team still has a chance of reaching the World Cup quarter-finals. National coach Toni Söderholm's team again showed great willingness and great passion against the USA, but did not reward themselves for their effort and convincing performance in the 0:2 (0:0, 0:1, 0:1). This means that tomorrow evening (from 19.00 p.m. live on SPORT1) there will be a decisive duel for a place in the World Cup quarter-finals against hosts Latvia.
Im DEBWith a goal, Felix Brückmann was given his second appearance at the tournament. NHL pro Dominik Kahun was called into the team for the first time after his mandatory team quarantine ended on Monday. Lukas Reichel also returned after missing the game against Finland. Defender Dominik Bittner made his World Cup debut.
The USA had so far left a strong impression in Riga. Head coach Jack Capuano's team responded to the opening defeat against Finland with four wins in a row and, conceding just six goals, had the best defense of the World Cup to date. And she wanted that DEB-Selection with quick switching game and more moves towards the goal than last crack.
So it didn't take long before John Peterka (5th) had the first opportunity to finish straight after a face-off. On the other side, the Americans also appeared dangerous in front of Brückmann, who had several strong ones Parathat showed. Shortly before the first break, Leonhard Pföderl (19th) had another good opportunity to take the lead for his colors when he followed up.
Both teams didn't give up anything in the middle period and, with the same number of players, didn't give up many chances in front of their own goal. Nevertheless, Reichel (29th) and Tom Kühnhackl (34th) had the lead DEBteam on the stick, but US goalie Cal Petersen, like Brückmann, was in strong form. The Americans finally scored their first goal of the afternoon when they had the advantage when Jason Robertson (39') shot in while standing free in front of the goal, although the German team had significantly more shots.
The DEB-Selection increased the pressure again in the final period to achieve the longed-for equalizing goal. Pföderl (43') had the best opportunity after great preparatory work by Reichel, but the disc scraped a few centimeters past the goal. In the dramatic final phase, Brückmann kept his front men in the game when he thwarted a solo attempt. After an unfortunate penalty time, the US boys were also awarded a four-minute power play.
She survived that too DEB-Selection and started the final offensive with six field players. And it failed again DEB-Selection was very close, because Kahun's well-placed shot (59th) only landed on the post. Around 30 seconds before the end, the USA took the puck and scored into the empty German goal to make the decision. Markus Eisenschmid was named best player.
At the end of the preliminary round in Group B the DEB-Selection will play in front of spectators for the first time in the decisive duel for the quarter-finals. People who have been vaccinated and those who have recovered under Corona conditions are admitted. The maximum number of spectators in the Arena Riga is 2660 ice hockeyFans.
Voices about the game:
National coach Toni Söderholm: "Sometimes sport is like that and victory doesn't come straight away, even though the level of performance is right. But we can take a lot of confidence with us, the team played a very strong game. We've known the schedule for months, we know that Tuesday is a great challenge and we're happy that we're playing a game like this. It's important that we start from scratch and take the positive scenes with us, there were some really good elements in terms of playing. It's also nice for our players and they'll be happy that there are spectators in the hall."
Captain Moritz Müller: “All in all, we played a good game against a strong nation. In the end, perhaps the last move to score was missing. Our build-up game was much better, we were able to establish ourselves much better on offense. We can take that with us for tomorrow. We've played a good tournament so far and have put ourselves in a position to make the quarter-finals with a win tomorrow. We are now preparing for a big fight against the Latvians. We've done this against them before. We’ll do it again tomorrow.”
Striker Marcel Noebels: “We improved today and certainly deserved more today. Overall, we took more shots, but we should have been in front of their goal more often to create second or third chances. Nevertheless, we spent a lot of time on offense, won a lot of duels and did a lot of things right. “We’ll quickly get the game over with and prepare for the quarter-final final against the hosts.”