Before the polar bears’ second game: Defeated the “shitty preparation” – sport

They hadn’t lost their humor with the polar bears. When stadium announcer Uwe Schumann announced the number of spectators, he spoke of a “sold out house” on Friday evening. In the hall at the Ostbahnhof there were, according to his interpretation, “16 representatives of the press and six photographers” and given the circumstances that would be a full hut. Well, there were a few more people in the wide, yawning stands of the arena at Ostbahnhof.

Maybe there were 60 people who were allowed to watch the polar bears’ first season appearance in the German Ice Hockey League (DEL). And it was worthwhile in any case, the Berliners won in a good game 3: 2 against the Fischtown Pinguins from Bremerhaven.
The only thing missing was around 14,000 spectators for a proper ice hockey festival, as there would have been enough space in the arena. But there is no other way at the moment, although professional ice hockey in an empty hall is of course completely dead and polar bear coach Serge Aubin supposedly thought of those who could not be there after the game. “Greetings to all of our fans who saw the game on TV,” he said. “I know how much they were excited.”

On Tuesday the Berliners continue in Wolfsburg

It was a fun game. Because the Bremerhaveners were actually favorites. After all, there were eight new players on the ice with the polar bears, and then with Marcel Noebels, Jonas Müller and Nino Kinder, they were definitely not unimportant players. But it was the new professionals, above all Kristopher Foucault, who made an impressive debut for the Berlin team. The Canadian scored 1-0 and then knew why the Berliners had just won. “We worked on our power play during the week,” said Foucault. “We knew it would be a key to winning the game.”
As easy as on Friday, the Berliners should not always be able to do this, although they are probably lucky with the group division introduced because of the shortened emergency season. In the north and west, the teams (in addition to Berlin and Bremerhaven, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Krefeld and Iserlohn) are probably weaker than in the southern group, in which Mannheim and Munich will fight for first place. Only the best four of each seven teams make it into the play-offs, the polar bears now have the Grizzlys from Wolfsburg as their next opponent after Bremerhaven, who seems to be beatable.

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Although this game also has a bitter aftertaste for the Berliners, in the non-corona case around 1000 fans of the Berliners always travel to Lower Saxony. That won’t happen on Tuesday, of course.

On Friday, the Berlin players were in a good mood despite the lack of fans in the hall. Leo Pföderl, scorer of the third Berlin goal against Bremerhaven, said shortly after the game in his relaxed Bavarian style: “The team fought brilliantly, the victory was very important. Because everyone knows that we had a shitty preparation with Corona and such. ”That was probably how it was, very succinctly to the point.

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