The German U20 national team is not rewarded for its strong performance in the Ice Hockey U20 World Championship against defending champion Canada and loses its last group match 3:6. The group phase ends the DEB-Team in 5th place and has to go into relegation. The goal scorers for U20 national coach Tobias Abstreiter's team were Julian Lutz, Roman Kechter and Julius Marsh. Matthias Bittner started in goal.
After just eleven seconds, Samuel Schindler had to take a hard check to the head. The Canadian Conor Geekie was given a game disciplinary penalty for this, so that DEBteam was able to play with a man advantage for five minutes. Julian Lutz scored the early lead to make it 1-0 (3rd minute). The Canadians, now back to five men, had their first chances, which Matthias Bittner was able to parry. In the seventh minute, however, the puck flew past him: Macklin Celebrini shot straight through two German defenders to equalise at 1-1. Bittner then made two world-class saves. This was followed by the first power play for Canada, which led to a 2-1 lead by Brayden Yager. Immediately before the goal, Luca Hauf was hit in the face with a stick without the game being stopped. A few seconds before the break, Roman Kechter had another great chance.
After a minute and a half in the second period, the German U20 had its second power play. And it didn't take long until Roman Kechter made it 2-2 with his shot from the second row (22'). In the 24th minute, Luca Hauf had to go to the penalty box, so the outnumbered formation was required. The DEB-Team was able to survive the Canadian power play unscathed, but had to continue to thwart Canadian attempts to attack. The German selection also created further chances through Hördler, Panocha and Marsh, among others, but had to withstand a real storm from the Canadians towards the end of the third. Especially thanks to strong ParaThe Bittners went into the second break tied 2-2.
The Canadians got off to a better start in the final third, with Owen Beck taking the lead again after just 100 seconds (42nd). Shortly afterwards there was a 2+2 penalty against Canadian Jordan Dumais for a high stick that resulted in injury. Julian Lutz had his first big chance with a slap shot in the first minute of the power play. Shortly before the end of the double penalty time, Julius Marsh pulls away from the blue line. The shot is deflected and lands in the Canadian goal (48th). Shortly afterwards, the Canadians took advantage of Paul Mayer's suspension. Jordan Dumais puts the North Americans in the lead again (49th). In the 54th minute, Moritz Elias missed the equalizer again. A short time later, the Canadians used a long release pass to Macklin Celebrini, who scored his second goal of the evening (57th). Easton Cowan finished with an empty net goal to make the final score 6:3 (58th). DEBJakob Weber was the player of the evening.
U20 national coach Tobias Abstreiter: “We played almost three decent games during the preliminary round. Unfortunately, we were unable to put this performance on the ice against Latvia, which is bitter for all of us in retrospect. Basically, the attitude and willingness to give everything was there today and we have to take that into the game against Norway.”
Striker Kevin Bicker: “We fought well and played well for two and a half thirds. Unfortunately we conceded a few unfortunate goals, so it wasn't enough in the end. We'll now take with you what went well in this tournament and what didn't. And then we have to implement the positive things in the game against Norway.”
Despite the historic opening win against Finland on Wednesday, the points at the end of the group phase were not enough to qualify for the quarter-finals. Thats how it is suppost to be DEB-Team on next Thursday against Norway win in the relegation to keep the class. This game will be shown live and free of charge again on MagentaSport. All other games of the World Cup knockout phase live and exclusively on MagentaSport and MagentaTV.