When a DEL main round turns into the home stretch, the main questions are usually: Who will make the play-offs? Who creates a good starting position? This year, however, the focus is on a completely different question: How many games are still played? The Krefeld penguins, who are now opponents of the Grizzlies twice within 48 hours, are particularly affected: on Wednesday (7.30 p.m.) in the Yayla Arena on the Lower Rhine, on Friday (7.30 p.m.) in the Wolfsburg Ice Arena.
advertisement
Corona has thinned out the schedule so much in the last few weeksthat it has long been clear: Not all games will be able to be made up for by the end of the main round at the beginning of April. Grizzly manager Charly Fliegauf was one of the first to say so, DEL boss Gernot Tripcke has meanwhile made similar statements. Only: The DEL has not yet officially announced that games will be canceled due to lack of time. “It would be good if that happened in a timely manner,” says Fliegauf. “So that the sporting starting point is clear for everyone before the last games.”
The DEL table is already not sorted by points – but by how many points a team has scored per game. The league had decided on this quotient rule just in case before the season. “Unanimously,” as Fliegauf emphasizes – and therefore has only limited understanding of the fact that opponents Krefeld now want to go on the barricades. The Penguins are last and are among the teams that will not be able to play all the games. And since there is a relegation this year, there is a risk of falling into the DEL2.
–
The penguins, on the other hand, want to sue. “We’ll try it. We’ll argue that it was an unfair competition,” said managing director Sergey Saveljev in the “Eishockey-News”. And in cryptic and hardly tenable allegations he hints that the game cancellations of the past few weeks have not been right. “It’s about: who has better connections to the state, to the health authorities? I’m not the only person who sees that,” says Saveljev. And: “In January, six of our games were postponed, five not because of us. At that time our players were healthy – and now I’m supposed to make up for all the games, but I have seven, eight, nine injuries.”
The Krefeld see themselves as the biggest “victim” of the quotient rule, but only six of the 15 DEL teams are expected to complete all 56 main round games, the Grizzlies are part of it, as is RB Munich – the biggest competitor in the fight for second place. “But we are also indirectly affected,” says Fliegauf – and points to followers Mannheim, who, like leaders Eisbären Berlin, will ultimately play fewer than 56 games.
Whether calculated by quotient or by points: With the two games against Krefeld and the following game in Augsburg, the Grizzlys are facing “perhaps a decisive week in the fight and the places and for the Champions League,” says Fliegauf. In order to achieve that, Wolfsburg must be at least third at the end of the main round.
The Grizzlies are favorites in all three games, but that doesn’t have to mean anything, says Wolfsburg’s manager – especially not against Krefeld. “There are opponents,” he says, “it’s always difficult – it doesn’t matter which team is on the ice or where they are in the table. Krefeld has always been such an opponent for us.” After all: So far this season it has worked from a Wolfsburg point of view, the two previous games against the penguins were won by the grizzlies 6:3 and 5:2.
–
