DEL – Freezers cold as ice, Eisbären still an endangered species

The German elite league now has 10 game days left before the play-offs and it gets more and more likely that this year’s play-offs will be started without the defending champion. Berlin’s polar bears – much as their real life counterparts – were on thin ice all season long already, but everybody was expecting to see them grabbing up points when it counts as they did in previous years. But they didn’t. Out of their last 10 games they only won two. The 2-4 home loss tonight against Krefeld put them 4 points behind Augsburg, currently sitting in the last pre-play-off spot.

One problem that occurred in the last weeks for Berlin is that - although showing some talent – they can’t bring it for a full 60 minutes. Last Sunday in Köln they were leading 2-1 midway through the second period, but then they experienced a little meltdown with 4 Sharks goals in just 6 minutes. The game was lost. The same happened just 2 nights before in the crucial game in Augsburg. Again they took a 2-1 lead over half of the game before receiving 3 Augsburg goals in just 4 minutes.

Right now Berlin is even risking to lose touch to teams that seemed to be without a chance to make the play-offs a few weeks ago like the Iserlohn Roosters.

But a bit of hope is still left. The gap is just 4 points and within the next 5 games they will play all the three teams that are behind them.

One of those teams, the Düsseldorfer EG, managed to blow a 3-1 lead in the last period today. As they sit in last place for weeks now it probably wouldn’t have hurt that much anymore if it wasn’t for the fact that this happened in the big Rhine Derby against their arch rivals from Köln. Colin Long, Andreas Martinsen and Dominik Daxlberger established a 3-1 lead for Düsseldorf against a Shark team that struggled with scoring over the last weeks. But in the last period they found the spark that lit up the fire again. Andreas Falk, John Tripp and Chris Minard turned the game around for Köln.

The Sharks on their end are currently chasing the Hamburg Freezers, who took over the lead in the standings a couple of weeks ago and built on it. The Freezers now have won 26 out of their last 31 games and seem more than ready for the play-offs. Tonight they beat the Nuremberg Ice Tigers 8-4 and while putting this result in perspective remember that those Ice Tigers set up a new record for “most wins to start the season” this year. On Friday they destroyed Berlin with 7-4. The only concerns you might hear in Hamburg these days will be if this top shape doesn’t come a few weeks too early.

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