Of course, Daniel Schmölz got two or three small nudges, in this zone of the ice you can hardly ever get away without it. But the Nuremberg Ice Tigers striker didn’t mind: Despite the pressure from the opponents, he held his position in Thursday’s derby against the Straubing Tigers and deflected the target in the 55th minute to make it 2-1, it was to be the game-winning goal in Nuremberg’s 4th goal be a :1 win.
The 31-year-old’s 17th goal of the season was a typical Schmölz goal: directly in front of the opponent’s goal, with an opponent in the back. He likes to position himself there, lurking for discs to deflect or for rebounds. He practiced his ability to successfully deflect the disc early on. With street hockey, or “fieseln”, as the people of the Allgäu call it. Home from school, lunch and then off to bang on until dinner: that’s what Schmölz’ youth days often looked like. “When the weather was nice, we were really just fiddling,” he recalls. Catching the ball from the air was very much in demand.
In order to assert yourself in front of the opposing goal, you not only have to be robust and able to take it, you also have to have your emotions under control, because punches and shoves are simply part of it. “If you allow yourself to be provoked, you’re in the penalty box too much and that doesn’t make sense,” he explains. But Schmölz’ fuse is long, “I don’t let myself be easily provoked,” he says. The fact that the game directly in front of the goal is inevitably associated with bruises doesn’t bother the Allgäu native either. “You know how to deal with the pain at some point,” he says. In the game itself you don’t feel it anyway because of the adrenaline, and after that ice packs help. “The next day it’s fine again – mostly,” he explains with a smile.
Schmölz is also committed to the boards, but he feels most comfortable in the position in front of the goal. “I like them,” he emphasizes, in the German Ice Hockey League (DEL) he is one of the best in this field. That has made him a reliable goalscorer, only Dominik Bokk and Maximilian Kammerer have scored more goals of the German players before the conclusion of Day 49 this season. Schmölz is only two short of his best from the 2020/21 season (19 goals). For the ex-professional and TV commentator Sebastian Schwele there is a player like Schmölz “in Germany not a second time”.
At the age of 30, he celebrated his World Cup premiere – and was used in all eight tournament games
As his team’s top scorer, Schmölz is partly responsible for the Franconians being in the middle of the pre-playoff race. Their form is good, because only ERC Ingolstadt has collected more points than them in the last 15 DEL games. “That’s how you have to play to get into the playoffs,” said Ice Tigers coach Tom Rowe after the derby win. Straubing’s coach Tom Pokel also found that the Ice Tigers played “with the necessary drive”.
And nobody in the Nuremberg squad embodies the urge to score as well as Schmölz, with his unyielding style of play he has also become a role model for the young players. Just look at what Schmölz is doing, you have to go there to score goals, Rowe regularly tells them. Fighting, completing checks, going where it hurts – “that’s exactly what Schmölzi does,” says Rowe, who was also able to coach the attacker at a special tournament last year: at the World Championships in Finland, where Rowe was a co- coach behind the gang – and Schmölz celebrated his World Cup premiere at the age of 30 and was used in all eight tournament games. Although he slipped into the national jersey late, he now seems to be stuck: he contributed two goals to victory in the Deutschland Cup last November.
In Nuremberg they even created their own term for goals from close range: “reinschmölzen”. Schmölz finds it “okay that people say that”. He also thinks it’s okay to score nicer goals more often, “but unfortunately that doesn’t happen that often,” he says with a grin. His motto is: It doesn’t matter how you get in, the main thing is that you get in.