Sometimes it helps to look into the past first if you want to look into the future. So flashback, a good 40 years back in time, a Spanish holiday island, the mood in the Mannheim tour group was great. The title “King of Mallorca” had not yet been invented, and Gran Canaria was much more popular, and that’s why Harold Kreis has been allowed to call himself “Mister Bonaventura” since then. This is not a hidden Balearic island, but a hotel where it was determined who has the sexiest upper body. Klaus Mangold doesn’t want to swear to the details, he says, “I wasn’t there at the time”. But one thing the teammate at the time remembers perfectly: “Harry was a great joker” – as soon as the season was over and the work was done.
The Harry (or Harri, as Mangold says) was a 19-year-old shy boy from Winnipeg, in the Canadian province of Manitoba, where there are moose and bears and caribou. And tough guys like Kreis. Along with a handful of other Canadian ice hockey players with names like western heroes from black-and-white films and private investigators from 1970s thrillers, Roy Roedger and Manfred “Mannix” Wolf, Kreis had come to Europe to see whether a talent could turn into a could do a job. Heinz Weisenbach, the coach of the Mannheimer ERC, which had just been promoted to the Bundesliga, had specifically looked for them in North America, with newspaper advertisements in places with a high density of ice hockey players and German-sounding names. A year later, in 1980, Mannheim was German champion for the first time.
Kreis and the others stayed in Mannheim, Kreis a little longer. In 1997 he ended his playing career after the second championship title, after almost 900 games in the highest German league for Mannheim and 180 international matches for Germany. Klaus Mangold, 73, the captain of the 1980 championship team, says: Kreis was one of the best German defenders ever.
Well, at 64 – and thus into the present – “Mister Bonaventura” is the German national coach, is facing his first world championship as the main coach and not even all of Rome’s augurs together could have read a better promise from the flight of a trained flock of birds than those who inherent in the word Bonaventure: it means “favourable wind” or “lucky fate”.
So what should go wrong? So.
At the start against eleven-time world champions Sweden (Friday, 7.20 p.m.), against hosts and defending champions Finland (Saturday, 7.20 p.m.) and the USA (Monday), “real boards” are waiting, says defender Moritz Seider. After that, it may no longer just be about the performance at this World Cup, but also about qualifying for the Olympic Games in 2026. The first eight nations in the world rankings are directly qualified. Germany is ninth after the botched games of Beijing 2022. The International Olympic Committee will only decide in 2024 whether the Russians, who are currently excluded from the World Cup by the World Federation IIHF, will be allowed to take part in the 2026 World Cup in Milan.
After the successes under Marco Sturm (Olympic silver 2018) and Toni Söderholm (twice World Cup quarterfinals, once semifinals), expectations have risen. That’s a good thing, the players think, a good thing, the coach thinks too. The team has developed a lot in recent years and should “continue to go into every game with this self-confidence”. He doesn’t feel any pressure, says Kreis: “We trust the players we have.”
Some top professionals are indispensable, others injured or indisposed for personal reasons
That was the big mystery in the preparation. Kreis has to do without more than a dozen established players, including Leon Draisaitl and Philipp Grubauer, who are employed in the NHL playoffs, several players from champions Munich and Tom Kühnhackl and Tobias Rieder, who have just faced each other in the final of the Swedish championship. Most are injured, others indisposed for private reasons. For the first time since 1994, there is not a single player from Mannheim in the squad for the Mannheim Idol Circle. Nevertheless, Kreis does without Dominik Bokk, Maximilian Kammerer and Daniel Schmölz, with 24 goals each, the three most successful German goalscorers of the past DEL season. “We don’t want the individual top scorer,” says Kreis. “We want the scoring to be spread over as many players as possible.” Success must come from team effort.
Has recovered from his injury: Moritz Seider.
(Photo: Monika Skolimowska/dpa)
Eight players from the 25-strong squad are going to a World Cup for the first time. On Wednesday, Kreis used the long knife again and eliminated four defenders. He can afford it because in Tampere, NHL pro Moritz Seider (Detroit Red Wings) and Kai Wissmann and Leon Gawanke from the American Hockey League, three defenders with World Cup experience join the team. And also because he does not deliver the message like a death sentence to those who have to stay at home. Former national player Patrick Reimer experienced Kreis as a coach in Düsseldorf for two years. He says: “Harry is a very fine person. He knows how to communicate with his players very well. And although he is not a native speaker, he is incredibly good at rhetoric in front of the team.”
As if to confirm this, the following dialogue takes place a few days before leaving for Tampere in the Munich team hotel: Kreis and his assistant coach Alexander Sulzer, a native of Kaufbeur who has played in North America for so long that he has forgotten some German words, is looking for the right one Description for a player: “What does versatility mean?” asks Sulzer. Circle assists: “Versatility.”
Important players are fit in time – including the young, multi-award-winning defender Moritz Seider
The short scene shows how well the German coaching team, which has only been in office since March after Söderholm’s surprising farewell, is already attuned to each other. In addition to Kreis and Sulzer, these include Finn Pekka Kangasalusta, goalkeeping coach Sebastian Elwing, Thomas Krauskopf (video) and Arne Graskowiak (athletics). With the team, especially due to the many changes, it is an approach in the quickest possible stepping stones. “It takes time to get involved with each other,” says Moritz Müller. He’s the captain, or as Kreis says, “a top performer and a culture bearer of this team for years”.
There is a third category in Kreis’ typology: the bearer of hope. In other words: There is Moritz Seider (who is also a top performer, multiple answers possible). Seider is one of three NHL pros on the roster alongside John-Jason Peterka (Buffalo) and Nico Sturm (San Jose) – and at just 22 years old, the one whose arrival drew the loudest echoes this week. Seider is also only part of the team. But with him scooping up accolades over the past two years (best defender in the Swedish league, best defender in the 2021 World Cup, NHL Freshman of the Year), this team is different.
Kreis had also initially canceled Seider due to several injuries, but then reported that he was ready for action. After a month’s break, he was “completely healthy” again, but still had to “scratch off the rust a bit and get going again”. About the start he says: “We need a decent start. If we play as a team, we are very difficult to beat.”
Harold Kreis is responsible for this. If you believe companions, no one is better suited for this delicate mission. His former captain Klaus Mangold says: “Harry is a great guy.” DEB captain Moritz Müller says: “a pleasant person, fair, very communicative”. Patrick Reimer says: “Harry is a very fine person. In the end, he will probably also be judged by results. But I don’t think that his experience puts him under the pressure that a younger coach might have, not even after the successes of Marco and Toni.” Not even if “Mister Bonaventura” is blowing a sharper wind in his face after three World Cup games.
