Hamburg Freezers withdraw from DEL

With all the World Championship excitement currently going on in Germany, the day off between games promised to be boring, but the Anschütz Group let a bomb explode today, that seemed to surprise even the league itself.

As of the next season 16/17 the Hamburg Freezers won’t be a part of the DEL. The AEG said the step had come due to problems that arise out of having two teams in one league. They were committed to the team, but could not hold it any longer.

Tom Miserendino, the president and CEO AEG Europe, also stated that they were looking for a national or international partner to take over the Freezers, but this did not turn out to be successful. The application for the DEL license has to be submitted by 24^th of may and this will not be done unless a partner has been found by then, although this seems very unlikely.

AEG also currently owns the Eisbären Berlin, a founding member of the CHL. Hamburg has also played CHL occasionally and with the Freezers the DEL will lose a club that averaged more than 9000 visitors last season.

The DEL wants to inform further at a later point since they were surprised as well and will have to check the further process.

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