It could all be so easy if only the virus could be planned. But Covid-19 is also in 2022 an opponent of all plans and thus also game plans. In the German Ice Hockey League (DEL), for example, chaos has reigned since the beginning of the season. There were hardly any complete game days, but there were always complete teams that had to withdraw into quarantine. A few days ago it hit the Augsburg Panthers, who had to pass three times this week.
Sometimes it can even be better not to have to play at all. That’s how the Nuremberg Ice Tigers see it, who had to play eleven field players in Augsburg at the end of January and lost 4:9. “By the way, you can also sell the ten free places on our players’ bench,” the Franconians replied to a tweet from the Panthers at the time, in which the Augsburgers had advertised buying tickets for the Bavarian derby.
The AEV had even pushed back dates for fear of ghost games when there was no corona emergency in between, which from today’s perspective was a weird idea. In the final sprint of the main round it is clear that some unusual games will not take place later. DEL Managing Director Gernot Tripcke confirmed this to the Tagesspiegel: “It is not realistic that Augsburg’s three most recent games can be made up for.”
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There is also an unusual game between Iserlohn and Straubing, for which no date can be found. According to Tripcke, the four games are hardly played anymore, at the end of the main round the points quotient would decide the placement of the teams instead of the points scored; as in the previous season, but then only one game was not played.
Main round would have to be extended
In the case of Augsburg, with three games missing, it was “a bit stupid, but I don’t see any alternative,” says Tripcke. The Eisbären Berlin, who wanted to play against Augsburg on Friday, have not given up hope that a catch-up date can be found. Club spokesman Leo Imme says: “We are still looking for opportunities and hope that it works somehow.”
But that seems unrealistic, but a horror scenario threatens: There are still only four of 420 games in the main round that cannot be played – but who believes that that was it with the teams in quarantine? “If that does catch on again, then maybe we’ll have to sacrifice more of the play-offs,” says Tripcke. “If there were 30 or 40 canceled games, we would have to extend the main round again.”
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A few days ago, the league extended the main round by a week and also decided that there will only be one relegated team instead of two. The play-offs are still scheduled in the “best of five” mode, so if they are expanded further, the “best of three” Mickey Mouse mode practiced in the previous season is threatened again. But there is a limit to the hustle and bustle: Five days before the World Cup in Finland, which begins on May 13, the DEL final series should be over at the latest. Incidentally, in other countries they can’t even do that, in Sweden they might still play on the first World Cup weekend – that could be absurd for the Scandinavian national team.
In Berlin, for the first time this year, 4000 spectators will come to the arena for the home game on Sunday against the Krefeld Pinguine (2 p.m., Arena am Ostbahnhof) if everyone in Krefeld and Berlin stays healthy until Sunday. But nobody knows that – except for the virus itself.
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