Last season, Schwenningen finished second from bottom and was only five points higher than the relegated Krefeld. With the new coach Harold Kreis, however, higher goals are now being sought than simply staying in class.
From almost relegated to play-offs, Schwenningen’s new manager Harold Kreis has arrived in the Black Forest with ambitious goals. If the Wild Wings were to make the play-offs, it would be a great result for the club. Since 2013, the people of Schwenningen have played in the German Ice Hockey League (DEL) again, reaching the pre-playoffs only once (2017/2018). To meet the new manager’s ambitious goals, Wild Wings made major changes to their squad this summer.
So it went last season
The Wild Wings got off to a bad start in the 2021/2022 season. In their first 19 games, the Black Forest team have only won five times, including one in overtime. In mid-November, Schwenningen was in last place and the managers split from coach Niklas Sundblad, who has been in charge of the team for nearly three years after all.
Sporting director Christof Kreutzer succeeded him in the position of coach. The 55-year-old starred in two roles until the end of last season. Things went better with Kreutzer, the team recovered. In his 36 games with him, Schwenningen averaged 1.31 points per game, compared to just 0.89 in the previous 19 games. The Wild Wings managed to leave Krefeld behind and ended up staying in the league but benefited from the fact that there was only one relegation due to the crown instead of the two set prior to the season.
Who comes, who goes?
Next season you will see a team in Schwenningen that have a lot of new positions. There have been eight starts and eight newcomers to Wild Wings this summer. Only in the position of goalkeeper everything remained the same: Joacim Eriksson, Marvin Cüpper and Luis Benzing are in goal.
Defensively, the Wild Wings must replace last year’s assistant captain Colby Robak. New on the defensive line are the Finnish Ville Lajunen and the Italian-German Alex Trivellato. Although Lajunen is a newcomer to DEL, he brings with him extensive international experience. The 34-year-old has already played in several major European leagues and was vice world champion with the Finnish national team in 2014. As an attacking defender, he should above all enrich Schwenninger’s power play. Alex Trivellato was on the ice in 50 DEL games with Schwenningen between 2015 and 2017. Most recently, the returnee and the Italian international played for HC Bozen.
Last year’s top scorer Maximilian Görtz (18 goals and 19 assists in 50 DEL games) did not receive a subsequent contract in Schwenningen. Originally, the Swedish striker was to be replaced by Canadian Andrew Calof, considered the best player in the Wild Wings. But Calof failed to fulfill his signed employment contract with Schwenningen and accepted a better-paid offer from the Russian ice hockey league. An unfortunate story for the Black Forest, sporting director Christof Kreutzer was pissed.
With Sebastian Uvira, Brandon Defazio, Mitch Wahl, Philip Hungerecker and Miks Indrasis, five highly experienced attacking players came to Schwenningen this summer to secure the necessary goal. The Wild Wings also managed to sign U20 national team player Florian Elias from Adler Mannheim. Elias is considered a promising talent and will take the next step in developing him in Schwenningen. What combinations in the storm the Schwenninger will use next season should be interesting. New manager Harold Kreis, for example, is very excited to see how Defazio-Olimb-Indrasis will fare.
The coach
With Harold Kreis, Schwenninger Wild Wings have engaged a highly experienced coach who also knows DEL very well. The 63-year-old German-Canadian has played nearly 900 first division games as a player for Mannheim and has coached various teams in Germany and Switzerland over the past 20 years. In Switzerland he was champion once with two teams. His last station was Düsseldorfer EG, which he has trained for the past four years.
Kreis says of the Wild Wings that the team has sold “under value” in recent seasons. His goal is to reach a stable level with the team, build and maintain it or even increase it throughout the season. Harold Kreis’ assistants are Canadian Ryan Marsch and former Finnish national team goalkeeper Markus Ketterer.
expectations for the new season
Harold Kreis is aware that the completely new coaching team and the many newcomers must first find each other. However, the manager already has a clear goal for next season: “Our goal is to fight for the play-offs and qualify for them.” For Schwenningen, this is a rather ambitious plan. The Wild Wings last reached the DEL play-offs in 1996, in the last ten years the team has only qualified once for the play-offs (2017/2018).
According to the coach, “work ethic” and “team cohesion” are the strengths of the Wild Wings and should help them achieve the ambitious goals. The team is definitely ready for the season, says Kreis. Although the development process is obviously never finished, the coach is very satisfied with the preparation. The team has improved from week to week and is now starting the new season “with a lot of self-confidence”.
It begins for the Wild Wings on September 16 with the difficult transfer to Adler Mannheim. Just two days later, the Black Forest hosted Düsseldorfer EG for the first home game of the season. Both are clubs that coach Harold Kreis knows very well from his past: “I had to smile when I saw who we were playing with in the first two games.”
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