EOnly a few dozen Berlin fans had come to Düsseldorf on Tuesday evening, they were standing right up under the roof of the hall. But every now and then they made themselves felt. “We want to see the polar bears,” echoed through the hall. They could be seen for a long time, the second third was already running at the Düsseldorfer EG. But for their fans, that had little to do with the real polar bears.
They are the defending champions in the German Ice Hockey League (DEL) and not a team that makes mistake after mistake and loses game after game. But that’s the reality right now. The 2:4 at DEG was the fourth defeat in a row. And the ninth in the 14th game of the season. Including indisputable performances at home like a 2:4 against Bietigheim and a 1:6 against Iserlohn.
After that, coach Serge Aubin apologized to the fans. But things have only gotten better since then. After almost a quarter of the season, the champions of the previous two years are in twelfth place and are closer to relegation than to the play-off places. And little went well in the Champions League either: Four defeats and 29 goals conceded in six games, out after the group stage – as the only German team.
Basement duel against Bietigheim
On Tuesday evening, the usual things were heard again when a team falls short of expectations: quarrels, frustration, self-criticism, perseverance slogans. “It wasn’t good enough. It’s the simple things that we do wrong, the penalties, the small mistakes that lead to goals being conceded,” said defender Eric Mik at Telekom broadcaster Magentasport and summarized the situation as follows: “If it doesn’t work, then it works Not.”
Later at the press conference, coach Aubin sounded similar: “Unnecessary disc losses”, “lost too many duels”, “lack of self-confidence”. But one thing is not: a crisis. “We’re going through a tough time, we know that, but don’t write us off. We’ll fix that and come back.”
Last season, the Berliners became champions under Serge Aubin.
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Image: dpa
The Berliners already have the chance to do so this Thursday (7.30 p.m. live on Magentasport). Then the Bietigheim Steelers continue. Before the season, that seemed to be a clear thing: here the relegation candidate from the 40,000-inhabitant town not far from Stuttgart, there the title aspirant from the metropolis. But now it’s a basement duel. Penultimate against fourth from last. Which is not surprising with the Bietigheimers, but how did the Berliners end up down there?
Anyone who asked around on Tuesday always got the same answer: There is no one reason, it’s a puzzle. The loss of several strong players from previous seasons and newcomers who don’t seem to have fully arrived yet. Old people looking for their form. Always new individual dropouts. Various injuries. The classic champion blues that defending champions in sports with playoffs experience again and again. Why give it your all in the fall when the only goal is to somehow save yourself in the knockout phase in the spring? And not to forget: the tightly timed calendar. Since the beginning of September, the polar bears have had to play 21 games in 55 days. DEL, Champions League, a friendly against the NHL team, the San Jose Sharks.
“It’s obviously not normal to play so much ice hockey in October,” said Marcel Noebels on Sunday after the 3-2 penalty shoot-out against Mannheim. You could also look back a little further. Because of the two titles, the polar bear seasons always lasted several weeks longer than for most of the competition. If, like Noebels, you are also a national player and travel to world championships and the Olympics, you can hardly get off the ice. Since December 2020, i.e. in less than two full calendar years, Noebels has experienced 171 competitive games.
And he’s not the only select player from Berlin. In addition, there are friendlies, training, thousands of kilometers in buses or trains, and even the champions rarely fly. But it doesn’t get any more relaxed for the time being, there are four more games to play in the next eleven days before the international break. Only then can the Berliners gather, and injured people should also come back. The season starts again in mid-November. If the fans have their way, they will then see the real polar bears at the latest.
