“They will probably play the same tactics as they did in preparation, when they brought in a new coach. That’s why we already know roughly what to expect,” says defender Fabio Wagner. The Ingolstadt native continued: “But the most important thing is that we concentrate on ourselves and simply play our best game tomorrow.”
Wagner is one of four players who took part in the first test matches in mid-April DEB-Teams were there for the 2022 World Cup. The opponent was called then, as it is called this Thursday in the quarter-finals: the Czech Republic. The results in Chomutov from a German perspective: 2:6 and 2:0. The other German players were Daniel Schmölz, who scored two goals against the Czech Republic, Samuel Soramies and Alexander Karachun.
The White-Red-Blue even have seven players from Chomutov in the World Cup squad. Jiri Cernoch, Michal Jordan, Matej Blümel, David Sklenicka, Jakub Flek, Jiri Smejkal and David Jiricek, along with the rest of the team, ensured that the quarter-finals were confirmed quite early. In between there was a surprising penalty defeat against Austria, but the four wins against Great Britain (5:1), Latvia (5:1), Norway (4:1) and the USA (1:0) made up despite the defeats against Finland ( 0:3) and Sweden (3:5) secured third place in Group B.
The team's top scorer is Roman Cervenka with three goals and eight assists, for a total of eleven points. The striker from the Rapperswil-Jona Lakers is currently in second place in the World Cup standings. The Czechs' second best scorer is Matej Blümel from Dynamo Pardubice. However, the big stars on paper are different. Above all, of course, David Pastrnak from the Boston Bruins. Like David Kämpf (Toronto Maple Leafs) and Michal Kempny (Washington Capitals), he only joined the team later. The other six NHLers were there, already there. Thanks to the two Czechs Jakub Vrana and Filip Vronek, the Detroit Red Wings with Moritz Seider as the third player are the club after the German champions Eisbären Berlin will provide the most players for the first quarter-final on Thursday. And one name has to be mentioned because he is one of the best Czech ice hockey players at the moment: Tomas Hertl from the San José Sharks. With 30 goals in 82 games he was the second best goalscorer and with 64 points the second best scorer on his team, both times behind the Swiss Timo Meier.
The last World Cup encounter between Germany and the Czech Republic was three years ago. In the 2019 quarter-finals, of all quarter-finals, the Czech Republic won very confidently 5-1. That's exactly why it's time for revenge.
However, and we should mention this again at this point, the Czechs have a new head coach, as Fabio Wagner already mentioned. The Finn Kari Jalonen won several national championship titles with his teams. By the way, there is also a certain Toni Söderholm in the squad. You could certainly read or hear this story in many other places today. For example here!
We only care about one thing, the semi-finals. Because. “Semi-finals are nice…”