Patrick Hager assumed this. Christian Winkler too. And Toni Söderholm anyway. The captain, the sports director and the coach of EHC Red Bull Munich had all expected that the playoff quarter-final series against the Grizzlys Wolfsburg would be a close and hard-fought one. There were enough signs of this. After 52 main round games, only one point separated the two teams in the table, the four main round duels ended with two Munich and Wolfsburg victories each. But the playoffs are not the main round. Captain Hager speaks of a “new year”.
This led to all three being wrong – in a pleasant way from their point of view. On Sunday afternoon, the EHC also won game four of the series 2-1 despite being behind and clearly won 4-0. The Munich team is the second playoff semi-finalist in the German Ice Hockey League (DEL). Shortly before them, the Fischtown Pinguins from Bremerhaven had also ended the season of ERC Ingolstadt, who had been in the final against Munich last season, with a 4-0 series win. The Munich team now has a full week to regenerate and prepare for the semi-finals, which will begin on April 1st.
“We have found playoff ice hockey,” said Munich’s Maximilian Kastner before game four. The attacker is someone who can judge this well, as he was named the most valuable player in the playoffs last season. It was Kastner who had the greatest chance in the starting third: four seconds before the end of the period, he appeared alone in front of Hannibal Weitzmann, but could not get past the Wolfsburg goalkeeper. Nikolaus Heigl hit the post in the third minute for Munich, who dominated the game.
Both goalkeepers looked good in game four
Unlike the first three games, Sunday’s game was the type of game that had been expected before the start of the quarter-final series: a defensive-focused one with few clear scoring chances. And one in which the goalkeepers looked good. Munich’s national goalkeeper Mathias Niederberger stood out several times, especially in the middle third, Weitzmann, who replaced Dustin Strahlmeier in the Wolfsburg box after game two, not only in the first Munich majority games, when he was greeted with chants of “Hannibal, Hannibal” from the Wolfsburg block .
In the 37th minute he thwarted a great chance from Hager, shortly afterwards the Grizzlys took the lead as Les Lancaster lost the puck and Gerrit Fauser successfully completed his solo effort. The guests then had a good chance when they were outnumbered, but Niederberger was there with his pad and was able to celebrate 34 seconds before the end of the middle third when Veit Oswald made it 1-1. “The assist was even better than the finish,” said Oswald at Magentasport about the assist provider Hager, who had always scored in the first three games of the series, and referred to the sensitive timing of the goal: “It hurts even more when you’re so close to it Conceded a goal at the end of the third.”
Munich’s goals at important times ran like a common thread through the series. On Friday it was a lucky goal from Ben Street in the final third to make it 4:2 (48th), which turned out to be the deciding factor in the 4:3 away win. This time it was Filip Varejcka who used a nice pass from Maximilian Daubner to make it 2-1 in the 46th minute. And this time it wasn’t just the game-winning goal, but the series-deciding goal. “Compared to the main round, we have improved by three levels,” said Varejcka after the final siren. The way the EHC is playing now cannot be compared with the way it was before the start of the playoffs. The “new year” in March started well for the EHC.