By Boris Rousson
bo@prohockey.de

Hamburg, Germany - We had another 500 week, losing our first game last Friday against Berlin, before salvaging our weekend on Sunday in Krefeld with a hard-fought win. If we want to establish ourselves in the top group, we will have to do better than that.

First sellout in CoLinA

When Berlin comes to Hamburg, it is always a little special. First of all, there always seem to be a lot of the “brass” in the arena, because as you may know, both teams are owned by the same people. And it is fueled by the media a little, and it goes all the way to the fans. Our Color Line Arena was sold out for the first time this season last Friday, and they saw a really good team, but it wasn’t us... You can now add Eisbären to my list of the impressive teams in the DEL. They gave us a good hockey lesson, and beat us 3-1. They are still very dangerous. They started the game by attacking us relentlessly. They were faster on every loose puck, they passed the puck really well and every attack seemed to generate a scoring chance or at least a shot on goal. They scored the first goal of the game in the 16th minute, when Barta grabbed a rebound and shot it over my glove. We started the 2nd period in a much better way, helped by a couple of power-play opportunities. Chief finally hammered a puck behind Jonas, on a nice pass from Brandon Reid. That goal gave us a slight edge in the game, for about one minute, until Berlin attacked again and Beaufait beat me on a nice play from Walker. In the third period, we could not create much offense, and Ustorf scored the final goal on their power-play. In my opinion, Berlin is right up there with Mannheim, Ingolstadt and Köln. At this moment, we are a step behind.

2nd road win

We bounced back in Krefeld, on Sunday. In our last visit in the old Rheinlandhalle, which will be replaced in December, we beat the Pinguins 1-0. Brandon Reid (again!) scored the only goal, 17 seconds into the second period, when he poked a loose puck through Müller. Krefeld played pretty good, they had a clear advantage in the shot stats, 35-20, but a little luck and a great effort from my teammates helped me record my second shutout of the season.

Hockey is strange sometimes. Krefeld was a nightmare experience for us during the München years. As Barons, we never won there... We got beat every single time, and sometimes really bad!! As Freezers, after losing the very first game there in 2002, we have won the last four. So, we are a little sad to see the Pinguins move in the new rink... We were pretty comfortable in the Rheinlandhalle!!

A chance for us

A very important weekend for us. We will face two teams that are below us in the standings, and again, if we want to establish ourselves in the top part of the standings, these are games that we have to win. We travel to Iserlohn on Friday, to play the Roosters. They have had a tough start, but I expect a hard game in there. They have a top NHL player, Mike York, who is leading their team in scoring, and in Kotschnew, one of the better prospects in goal.

And then, a game that a long of people in Hamburg have been talking about for some time already. Hannover is coming to CoLinA on Sunday, and the game is sold out for some time already. It is the first “Nord-Derby” of the season, but more importantly, it will be our first “real” game against 5 ex-Freezers that left us after last season. It will be strange for sure to face Lambo, Köppchie, Abschi and René [Dan Lambert, Patrick Köppchen, Peter Abstreiter and René Röthke], and for me, it will be the first time that I will face Küni in a real game (assuming that we both start the game...). We did play a preseason game in Hannover, but now there are points for the winner!! It will be fun!

Next week

After this weekend’s games, a quarter of the season will already be over, we will have played the first round of games and seen every other team in the league. We should have a pretty good idea of where we fit in, what our strengths and weaknesses are. I will then give you my own analysis of the first 13 games, as well as my outlook for the next quarter.