Ice hockey world championship: ice hockey team after initial bankruptcies with the psychologist

Ice Hockey World Championship
Ice hockey team after initial bankruptcies at the psychologist

In the duel against Finland, Fabio Wagner (r) and the German national ice hockey team suffered a 3:4 defeat. photo

© Antti Aimo-Koivisto/Lehtikuva/dpa

Despite two good opening performances, the German ice hockey team is under pressure at the World Cup. That is why he is now seeking psychological help. Some things still need to get better.

Now the mental coach is in demand. Given the next difficult task on Monday (3:20 p.m./Sport1 and MagentaSport) against the USA, the national ice hockey team is threatened with a terrible start and a lot of pressure in the following preliminary round games at the World Cup in Finland and Latvia.

Frustration and helplessness after two convincing but pointless opening games against eleven-time world champions Sweden (0:1) and defending champions and hosts Finland (3:4) were so great that the team of national coach Harold Kreis had a conversation with the sports psychologist Tom Kossak before training searched.

“That helped us a lot,” said captain Moritz Müller about the talks, in which the new national coach was not present. Kreis watched the training in Tampere on Sunday afternoon in a relaxed manner, although he felt “a lot of frustration” in his team on Saturday. “The frustration was yesterday, today the mindset is different, today we are looking ahead again,” said the 64-year-old, who also announced a personnel change.

New striker for the DEB team

The Berlin striker Manuel Wiederer should probably be licensed later. Daniel Fischbuch (Düsseldorf) or Dominik Tiffels (Munich), who have been completely disappointing so far, could be given a break. In addition, an attacking strong defender should make his debut against the USA in Leon Gawanke from Manitoba Moose from the North American AHL. The future Mannheimer arrived in Tampere on Sunday and is primarily supposed to improve the German majority game.

Overall, however, Kreis is making a demonstrative effort to emphasize the positive. “We’ve taken a step forward in terms of scoring,” said the German-Canadian. “The group itself works very hard and constructively, and that’s good prerequisites and a foundation to process two such hard-fought defeats and to say: OK, we’ll continue against America.”

Pressure before USA duel

But his team urgently needs points so that they don’t have to win after three games and zero points with the greatest pressure against the supposedly easier opponents Denmark, Austria, Hungary and France in order to still be able to reach the minimum goal of quarter-finals. However, the USA with the two clear victories against Finland (4:1) and Hungary (7:1) are so far the strongest team in Group A.

“We knew that we could get into such a situation. There is always pressure at a World Cup,” said Captain Müller and emphasized after the team meeting with psychologist Kossak: “The team plays good ice hockey. We play compactly, but we still have lots of homework ahead of us.” These are:

Even better defensive work

“We had a few situations in the defensive zone against well-disposed Finns, where they had good shooting opportunities too clearly. We want to strengthen the defensive zone there,” said Kreis. This is probably one of the reasons why the defensively stronger striker Wiederer should come into the team. “I think the goals we conceded were a bit too easy. We have to be in a better position there,” said Moritz Seider (Detroit Red Wings/NHL), by far the best German to date.

More shots on goal

With a score of 3:3 against the Finns, Germany had a number of offensive actions in the final third, but actually only managed three attempts on goal. The quality of the shots, which all too often still miss the housing, urgently needs to be improved. “Perhaps sometimes we want to make it a little too nice, especially on the power play. We have to get a little dirty there,” complained Stanley Cup winner Nico Sturm. “We also want to increase the rate of fire,” said Kreis. “We want to improve the straightness to the goal and generally the traffic in front of the goal.”

goalkeeping performance

Number one, Mathias Niederberger, should play again against the USA. After his strong performance against Sweden, he was given a break just 24 hours later against Finland. Substitute Dustin Strahlmeier made a crucial mistake when conceding the first goal. “If I save one more shot, we’ll win the game,” said the Wolfsburg self-critically. Against the USA, Germany needs a Niederberger in top form again. In the 3:6 in the last friendly against the Americans he wasn’t.

dpa

source site-2