The Olympic Casting has begun with a bitter bankruptcy for the German national team. 91 days before the winter games in Pyeongchang, the team of national coach Marco Sturm started with a 2:8 (1:1,1:4,0:3) defeat against record world champion Russia in the Germany Cup.
The selection of the DEB in a 2:1 lead came within 63 seconds to the losers and gave the game with stupid penalty times from the hand.
The Krefeld-based Daniel Pietta (14th) and the Mannheim-based Brent Raedeke (22nd) scored the goals for the Sturm team in front of 5050 spectators at the Curt-Frenzel Stadium. For the Russians, who are back in the DEB tournament for the first time since 1993, Artyom Fyodorov (8th), Yevgeny Ketov (32nd/58th), Konstantin Okulov (33rd), Dmitry Kagarlizkiy (37th), Mikhail Naumenkov (38th), Sergei Shumakov (52nd) and Ilya Mikhailiev (53rd) met. The next opponent of the German team on Saturday (16.00 hrs/sport1) is titleholder Slovakia, who defeated the USA 2:1 at the start.
Because national coach Sturm has to give up his stars around Leon Draisaitl after the cancellation of the NHL in South Korea, he is building his Olympic team in Augsburg. Only former NHL pros Christian Ehrhoff and Marcel Goc and the long injured top scorer Patrick Reimer were allowed to take a break. The trio can also play for the Winter Games (9. till 25. February 2018), Felix Schütz from Cologne, who was absent for personal reasons, and the injured citizen of Berlin, Frank Hördler, are also planning.
The remaining 20 Olympic tickets are in Augsburg:”There’s probably only one chance in life,”said Sturm, who took part in three Winter Games as a player. Of the 28 candidates he is testing this weekend, only two have Olympic experience: goalkeeper Dennis Endras and striker Marcel Müller.
Endras, most recently at the 2015 World Cup in an important tournament in Germany, had to concede an unfortunate goal early on. Fyodorov faked a shot, the puck slipped through the man from Mannheim. However, the 32-year-old proved his class several times, including a solo run by Nikolaj Prochorkin (11th). In the 34. He had to get injured in the cabin in the second minute.
The centre forward Pietta drew particular attention to himself: Krefeld, who had also not yet been taken into account by Sturm for the World Cup, only managed to equalise. Then he prepared the lead by Raedeke in overwhelming numbers. Within 63 seconds, the Russians, who only competed with half of their Olympic candidates, played the German defence twice in an exemplary manner and turned the game around with a double strike.
The Wolfsburg-based Björn Krupp collected minus points. The son of former coach Uwe Krupp’s former coach, Uwe Krupp, played a 2-2 draw and started the game with a superfluous penalty time of 2-4. At the fifth goal, two German players were on the bench.