Early Christmas presents for Adler Mannheim

While the top nations met in Sochi for the Channel One Cup and JYP Jyväskylä won the crown of European ice-hockey at the Final Six of the European Trophy in Berlin, the DEL kept going with its normal schedule. And one team used the pre-Christmas games to get some presents for themselves.

Adler Mannheim won the last 3 consecutive games and managed to do it with a combined goal differential of 18-2.

One week ago they started their run with a 6-2 win in Straubing. After a first period in which both teams traded two goals each, Mannheim finally caught fire. Martin Buchwieser and Mike Vernace both converted set ups from Yannick Lehoux just to hand over the stage to Jonathan Rheault and Jochen Hecht.

Dennis Endras turned down 35 shots in this game, but this was just the start of a run of 8 periods without receiving any further goals and counting. With that in mind the defensive story of the last weekend is told: No goals received by Adler Mannheim.

On offense they were a lot busier with carrying pucks from the net to the middle line. Especially the game on Friday was important for the Eagles as they hosted their arch rivals from Schweninngen that day. And it was a good day to do so. Mike Vernace got 2 more points and Schweninngen had to clean their net five times.

As it turned out later it could have been worse. Did you do the math already? Exactly, Sunday saw Mannheim win by 7-0 against the Augsburg Panthers. What did Mike Vernace do? Well, this time he had just one assist, but his colleagues took over. Yannick Lehoux, Christoph Ullmann and Marcus Kink all had 3-point nights.

So, Mannheim is definitely on fire and reclaimed 4^th place over the weekend. However, the post Christmas games won’t get easier. In the past three games they had opponents from the bottom third of the standings while the final three games in 2013 will be mostly against the big boys of the DEL. Thursday they will have to fight their way through the Shark tank in Köln and we’ll see if Santa Claus still has something left in his bag for Mannheim. After that there is one more game against Iserlohn and then they will host the Grizzly Adams Wolfsburg.

The Sharks just won the first top match of their Christmas homestand against Nürnberg with 2-1 after penalties. An early 2nd period goal by Patrick Reimer for the Ice Tigers could be equalized just minutes later by Yared Hagos and so it was up to captain John Tripp to score the decisive penalty. By that win Köln secured their position as the DEL’s top team, which will be challenged once more against Mannheim on Thursday.

A big help to keep their position was the win of ERC Ingolstadt against the Hamburg Freezers. Ingolstadt came out strong in the first period when Greilinger, Laliberte and Hahn established a 3-0 lead that could not be matched by the Freezers as the game progressed. In the end the scoreboard read 3-2 in Ingolstadt's favor.

Tweets by @eurohockey