DEL playoffs semi-finals: Munich’s hope for the impossible

There are situations in professional sports where it’s better not to think too much. In ice hockey, this can be particularly helpful in the playoffs. No matter how good or bad a game, a third, an action was: quickly put it aside and concentrate on what comes next. This is how the experienced players and coaches teach it. Patrick Hager, captain of EHC Red Bull Munich, is a very experienced player at 37 years old and has played more than 1000 games in the German Ice Hockey League (DEL). He describes it like this: “If you manage to stay in the moment, you have a good chance of having a bit of control over your brain and not drifting away.”

The Munich team has been in the worst possible playoff situation since last Sunday: their opponent, Adler Mannheim, has won all of the first three semi-final games. This means that the next Munich defeat means the end of the season. Yasin Ehliz, Hager’s strike partner, therefore issued the motto: “Head off, just go for it.” On Tuesday evening, that approach worked. The EHC won semi-final game four against the Adler 5-1, Ehliz scored the important goal to make it 2-1 (38th minute). This meant that the Munich team stayed alive and will compete again in Mannheim on Friday.

Head coach Oliver David’s team continues to play against history, as no team in the DEL has ever managed to turn around a 3-0 series deficit. “The mountain is huge,” said Captain Hager. He is hopeful about the quality and experience in the team, “that we can function under pressure” – and the series itself. Despite Munich’s 3-0 deficit, it was by no means one that Mannheim dominated.

The Eagles won the first two games in extra time thanks to an outstanding Maximilian Franzreb goal; game three was tied until eight minutes before the end. “Munich perhaps should have won the first two games,” admitted Mannheim international Justin Schütz. “We weren’t hopelessly outnumbered,” emphasized Hager, “in some cases we shot ourselves in the foot.” He was alluding to the poor conversion of chances in the first three games. Munich attacker Markus Eisenschmid put it this way before the fourth semi-final game: “We have now learned enough from the first three games.”

“A lot has been going our way so far in this series,” Eagles coach Dallas Eakins said

On Tuesday, the EHC not only won its first game of the series, but also broke through the seemingly insurmountable wall that Franzreb had built in the Eagles’ goal for the first time. “We have to break this goalie,” EHC striker Chris DeSousa emphasized in game three – and the Munich team did that in the final third of game four. Within just 46 seconds, Hager and Eisenschmid scored in the 46th minute to make it 3-1 and 4-1 against Franzreb, who had parried an outstanding 95 percent of Munich’s shots in the first three semi-final games.

“So far in this series, a lot has gone our way,” said Adler coach Dallas Eakins: “We had the necessary luck, had goals and saves at the right time. Today that luck left us.” Despite the still comfortable series lead on paper, the Mannheimers are by no means already in the final. Justin Schütz had already said after the third win in the third game that he still believed “it will be a long series”.

A series in which the Munich team can no longer afford to make a mistake. Eisenschmid explained it to Magentasport after game three: “We now have game seven four times, so to speak.” The fact that everyone in the EHC dressing room knows that the next defeat means the end of the season is a situation “that you have to be able to deal with, especially mentally,” emphasized Hager, who came to the mixed zone in flip flops. Oliver David doesn’t even want to allow himself to calculate how high his chances are of making it to the final. “My head would explode,” he said, “I have to think a lot smaller.” Rather, he has a puzzle in mind “that we have to solve so that the season doesn’t end earlier than we want.” The first EHC puzzle pieces came together on Tuesday. This series version is probably a 1000-piece puzzle.