Ice hockey playoffs: A financially strong quartet chases the title

The four biggest clubs in the German Ice Hockey League are in the playoff semi-finals that begin on Wednesday. After last year’s one-sided final series, when the Eisbären Berlin dismantled the Kölner Haie with 4-1 wins and 27-3 goals, the constellation is something of a stroke of luck for the league. Champions Berlin, Cologne and the financially strongest teams Adler Mannheim and EHC Red Bull Munich are competing. The master question is therefore more open than it has been for a long time – although the debates about excessive hardness on the ice continue after the incidents of last week.

Mannheim’s coach Dallas Eakins compared his team with Munich before the start of the semi-final series on Wednesday. “Both teams could hardly be more balanced,” he said. There is also no clear favorite in the new edition of last year’s final between Berlin and Cologne. “The lesson we learned will help us a lot this year,” believes Cologne coach Kari Jalonen.

Jalonen has strengthened his team, which was significantly better this season, by signing Finnish goalkeeper Janne Juvonen. Juvonen was recently named not only the best keeper, but also the best player in the entire league. In the playoffs, Juvonen is currently leading the goalkeeper statistics again. “You have a different team,” Eisbären coach Serge Aubin also recognized.

Edwin Tropmann suffered a traumatic brain injury after a bad foul

The prestigious duel between Mannheim and Munich also promises to be explosive. Because the tough quarter-final series of EHC Munich against Ingolstadt with the bad foul by national defender Fabio Wagner on Ingolstadt’s Edwin Tropmann still has an impact. The fourth game escalated when the Munich team clearly went overboard in the 7-2 defeat in Ingolstadt with a total of 125 penalty minutes. Three players were sent to the dressing room early by the referee team. At least the Ingolstadt professional Tropmann was able to leave the hospital again after the brutal foul on Thursday. With a traumatic brain injury, as Ingolstadt manager Tim Regan reported after the 7-3 defeat in the fifth game: “It is still questionable how his health will develop.”

Wagner was suspended for 14 games by the DEL because of the foul; he is no longer allowed to compete in the playoffs. The topic was still on the minds of the professionals on Saturday: “Everyone wants to become champions, everyone wants to win games, of course,” said Ingolstadt veteran Daniel Pietta on Saturday to the broadcaster Magentasport: “But if that has to be the price to achieve something like that, I can happily do without it.” The Ingolstadt striker particularly criticized Munich coach Oliver David: “You can’t say that it’s part of the game. If it’s part of the game, I’m no longer in the mood for this game.”

Mannheim should also have something to counteract a possible overly tough style of play. The Eagles are the team with the third most penalty times in the league so far, the EHC the one with the most. Coaches Eakins and David were fined in the quarterfinals because, according to the league, they no longer had any influence on the discipline of their players.