The German U20 national team lost the third game at the U20 Ice Hockey World Cup in Sweden against Latvia 2:6. The remaining group games on New Year's Eve will decide which place U20 national coach Tobias Abstreiter's team will occupy at the end of the group phase. Samuel Schindler (27th) and Norwin Panocha (54th) scored for Germany. As the best DEBgame, Samuel Schindler was honored today.
In goal, Philipp Dietl got his second start at this tournament. But this didn't develop as planned. The Latvians were immediately successful with their first shot on goal in the third minute: Eriks Mateiko tunneled through Dietl and scored Latvia's first goal of the tournament. The DEBThe team looked for a quick answer and had their first big chance in the fifth minute through Veit Oswald, but the Latvians were able to parry it. In the eighth minute we had to DEB-Captain Philip Sinn in the penalty box for two minutes (legging). The Latvians used the following power play to score their second goal: Rodzers Bukarts made it 2-0 with a direct shot (10th minute). The DEBThe team struggled to gain momentum, but had another great chance in the 14th minute after a pass from Roman Kechter to Julian Lutz, which the Latvian goalie Deivs Rolovs defused with his stick hand. In direct response, Peteris Bulans increased Latvia's lead to 3-0 (14').
After the break, Roman Kechter, standing at the far post, had the next top chance of the first in the first seconds of the middle third DEBgoal, but was prevented from shooting on goal by the Latvian defender. Shortly afterwards, Julian Lutz had to go off for two minutes because of a stick strike (22'), but the Latvians were unable to benefit from this. On the other side, the first penalty against Latvia followed, which also resulted in the DEB-Selection was initially unable to make a profit. Shortly after the end of the power play, Samuel Schindler, who shot the target on goal, celebrated a mistake by the Latvian Goalies benefited and reduced the score to 1:3 (27th). The DEB-U20 was able to keep up the pressure, but ran into a Latvian counterattack in the 31st minute, which Rainers Darzins completed with the 4-1. Three minutes later at 4-on-4, Veit Oswald single-handedly had the second German goal on his stick, Latvia's goalie Deivs Rolovs left him no gap. When Niklas Hübner and Jakob Weber were serving their penalties at the same time in the cooler, Sandis Vilmanis took advantage of the double advantage to make the score 5-1 at halftime (38').
That played in the final third DEBteam had the advantage in the first five minutes after Latvia had to serve two penalties in a row. That had compelling chances DEBteam doesn't do it. Instead, Sandis Vilmanis took advantage of a coordination error in the German defense in the 47th minute and made it 6-1 for Latvia. U20 national coach Abstreiter then changed Goalies and sent Matthias Bittner into the goal. With just under seven minutes left, Norwin Panocha scored the second DEB-Goal from a pass from Julius Marsh. There were no further hits.
U20 national coach Tobias Abstreiter on the game against Latvia: "That wasn't the game we had imagined and we didn't do the things we had planned. The start of the game wasn't good and we never really got going. We didn't manage to assert ourselves, win tackles and get decisively in front of the opponent's goal. The Latvians were ahead of us there and we also took a few unnecessary penalties that cost us energy. We will do everything we can to put in a good performance against Canada tomorrow. To do that, the boys have to understand how to do the simple things right and not try to do anything extraordinary."
Tomorrow, New Year's Eve, the last group match will take place at 19:30 p.m. The match against defending champion Canada will be broadcast live and free of charge on MagentaSport transfer.