First day of Spengler Cup full of surprises

26 Dec 2012 | Dennis Mende

Fribourg-Gottéron and Adler Mannheim have started with underdog wins into the first day of Spengler Cup. While the Swiss team had an easy win, the Germans had to wait until overtime for their victory.

The 86th edition of Spengler Cup started with a huge surprise. Swiss side Fribourg-Gottéron managed to get a high 5-1 win against the favourites from KHL, the 2011 Gagarin Cup winners Salavat Yulyaev Ufa. Igor Mirnov had even opened the score for the Russians at the end of the first period before Benjamin Plüss and Greg Mauldin used a double within 85 seconds to turn the game into favour of Fribourg at the start of the second. With their goals in the last 20 minutes Andrei Bykov, Julien Sprunger and Mike Knoepfli even increased the result to a four-goal win that gives Fribourg an excellent starting position before their last game in the group stage of "Group Torriani".

In the second match Adler Mannheim earned an overtime win against Team Canada. Both sides can count with many lockout players this year who are stars in their respective NHL teams but play in Europe these days, inclduding Dennis Seidenberg, Marcel Goc and Jason Pominville (Mannheim) or John Tavares, Patrice Bergeron and Tyler Seguin (Canada). And this Tyler Segiun was immediately decisive but not to the favour of his team. When he sat in the penalty box for tripping Adam Mitchell used the following power play for the Mannheim lead. In the third period he recompensed with his equalizer - also in power play. Jason Pominville won the extra point for the Eagles in overtime though at 63:00.