Düsseldorfer eG ice hockey team is getting out of the DEL

The last ten minutes of Düsseldorfer eG in the German ice hockey league on Friday evening were one of the bizarre what this club experienced in its 90-year history. After the final siren of a 3-0 victory against Wolfsburg on the final 52nd matchday, the Düsseldorf players stood on the gang and looked at the video bubble under the hall roof. The last five minutes of the parallel game between Iserlohn and Augsburg were shown live. Several thousand spectators in the Düsseldorf Halle chanted loudly: “Iserlohn, Iserlohn!”

Augsburg led 3: 2 in Iserlohn shortly before the end. In order for Düsseldorf not the last, Augsburg was not allowed to win in the regular season. But Iserlohn no longer wanted to equalize. At the end of the main round, Düsseldorfer eG was the bottom of the table and is now officially the sporty relegation. Should the playoffs of the second division win one of those five teams that have applied for a DEL license, then Düsseldorfer EG will be determined as a relegation in the DEL2 at the end of April. There is hardly any doubt that it will happen.

It would be the third time that Düsseldorfer eG had to go down from the first division into the second. In 1959 the club rose from the newly founded Bundesliga and in 1998 he had to start the Gang from the DEL into the second division because he was completely over -indebted. This third descent now, many observers think, would be extremely unnecessary. Düsseldorf’s Norwegian goalkeeper Henrik Haukeland said: “We certainly didn’t have the worst team in this league – but we played the worst.” The former German international Philipp Gogulla, 37, Thorsten Ankert, 36, Sinan Akdag, 35, Bernhard Ebner, 34, and Laurin Braun, 34, as well as the current German national players Alexander Ehl, 25, and Alexander Blank, 23.

When the last place was fixed and each of the almost 12,000 spectators in Düsseldorf Dome knew that this would mean descent, the DEG press spokesman Frieder Feldmann stepped on the ice and said in a microphone: “The season was a disaster and we want to apologize to everyone.” The fans whistled shrill. Feldmann has been in the club for many years and actually a sympathizer, the whistles may have been more likely to have been met with the managing partner Harald Wirtz, who is confronted with rugged criticism, as well as the sports director Niki Mondt, about whom fans have to call: “Mondt has to get out!” Neither Wirtz nor Mondt showed themselves to the audience. The trainer Steven Reinprecht said cool in the press conference: “I accept my share in the descent.”

Goalkeeper Haukeland clearly criticizes the club owner

“We played too bad and too inconsistent overall this season,” said the sports director Mondt in the cabin aisle. “The descent is not yet official, but five of the top six teams in the second division are entitled to promotion; I think Kassel is the top favorite, after that come Krefeld, Dresden and Ravensburg (who are the only club don’t want to climb,.), our chances are at least 25 percent, but for me it feels like the descent. ”

The clearest words took place shortly after the game of goalkeeper Haukeland, 30, who played his third season in Düsseldorf. “I said the club needed changes a year ago, but at that time it didn’t cause anything to be triggered on the management of the management,” he said now. He criticized that the club had not taken any money before the season. It was only in December that players were subjected to. In the cabin gang, Haukeland said in astonishingly calm tone in the journalists’ recording devices: “I don’t care whether what I say now has consequences for me, but I say: If you have no money and if you don’t want a professional sports team at all, at least none in the first division, then you should say that in summer, or better: then not a club owner!”

The descent breaks his heart, said Haukeland and sounded even sadder when he recently remembered that three people had only died from the team’s environment within a few weeks: the player Tobias Eder, the defender Paul Postma and the brother Alec McCrea, who was active for DEG until 2023.

The fact that 98 Ultras of the DEG had been given nationwide ban on halls for weeks after riots around the derby in Cologne and had also suffered the mood from the DEG decline during home games from home games. Between the end of November and mid -February, this club lacked the blocked and further mood makers. Nevertheless and despite the mew performance of the team, the DEG set up an internal audience record this season with an average of 9104 spectators. But not even that helped.

Düsseldorf became champion eight times, most recently in 1996

“We have almost ten thousand fans at every home game, we have a beautiful ice rink and a wonderful city,” said goalkeeper Haukeland, “but we just threw it away.” Of course it is also the fault of the players, because you didn’t play well. “But the quality of the squad wasn’t good enough either and Niki Mondt didn’t have the chance to form a competitive team.”

The DEG has become German champion eight times, most recently in 1996. Now it has arrived at a low point of its history. “Thanks for nothing,” the fans had written on a banner for a long time before the last Düsseldorf first division game. “The DEG will live on,” the club replied after the game on the video bubble under the hall roof.