Munich, Germany - Norwegian Trond Magnussen converted the winning penalty shot as the Düsseldorfer EG Metro Stars beat moved into first place in the DEL Sunday night with a 2-1 overtime win over the Kassel Huskies. The encounter of playoff contenders Berlin and Nuremberg turned into a rout. A late solo effort by Mannheim’s Wayne Hynes handed newcomer Ingolstadt another close loss.

With 4,890 in attendance at Düsseldorf’s Brehmstraße, Marc Beaucage gave the Metro Stars a 1-0 lead on a two-man advantage midway through the middle frame. Thomas Daffner’s goal six minutes into the final period sent the game into overtime. Düsseldorf’s 2-1 (0-0, 1-0, 0-0, 1-0) victory ended Kassel’s two-game win streak.

Defending champion Kölner Haie, which had a bye, has a chance to reclaim the league lead with a win over the Hanover Scorpions Tuesday night.

Martin Jiranek’s early tally got the Nuremberg Ice Tigers off to a good start in Berlin. But the Eisbären responded with five unanswered goals, turning the contest into a rout. Rob Shearer, Kelly Fairchild, Yvon Corriveau, Sven Felski and David Roberts scored as Berlin steamrolled the Tigers, 5-1 (3-1, 2-0, 0-0) at the Wellblechpalast.

Iserlohn continues to surprise

Lasse Kopitz had two goals and Scott King had a goal and two assists as the Iserlohn Roosters thrashed the Augsburg Panthers, 6-1 (3-0, 1-0, 2-1). Three of Iserlohn’s six goals were powerplay scores.

Hynes gives Mannheim late win at Ingolstadt

Mannheim squandered a 3-1 lead, but caught a lucky break when Wayne Hynes came up with the game-winner with 1:51 left in regulation as the Adler beat ERC Ingolstadt on the road, 4-3 (0-1, 3-1, 1-1). Both teams lost a player to injury: Ingolstadt’s Jason Ruff is likely to miss up to two months with a fractured arm while Mannheim’s Tomas Martinec will be out for at least six months with a partially torn ACL.

A breakaway goal by Sean Tallaire gave Ingolstadt an early lead. First line winger Ruff fractured his arm when he got banged against the goal’s framework by Mannheim’s Yannick Seidenberg in the second period. The incident turned out to be a momentum changer. The Adler got the equalizer when defenseman Sascha Goc capped an odd-man rush, ripping a slapshot past Mike Bales’s glove hand from the left faceoff circle. Playing short-handed, Andy Roach gave Mannheim a 2-1 lead only two minutes later on a breakaway that almost looked like a carbon copy of the first one, hammering the puck past Bales’s stick side. Todd Hlushko doubled the lead to 3-1, netting home the rebound of Goc’s point shot on the man advantage.

With less than a minute to go in the second, Ingolstadt struck back. Francois Bouchard extended his goal-scoring streak to four games, one-timing the puck over Adler goalie Mike Rosati’s glove hand from the blueline on the powerplay. Glen Goodall got the 3-3 equalizer early in the final period. Storming into Mannheim’s zone, he rifled the puck past Rosati from the far right slot. With the momentum on Ingolstadt’s side, Mannheim showed patience and cleverness. Off his own faceoff win, Wayne Hynes pulled to the net and lifted the puck under the crossbar for the game-winner with less than two minutes left in regulation.

Ruff’s injury hurting more than ”heart-breaking” loss

“It’s heart-breaking,” Bouchard said, “but we gotta take this as a learning experience. It’s gonna be like this for us all year, one-goal games, we gotta expect that.”

„For a couple of minutes,“ Jim Boni said, „we thought we could play with them. We opened it up too much and they scored the game-winner. But congratulations to my guys, they showed great poise and put on a great rally. It’s not easy to erase a two-goal deficit against Mannheim. My biggest disappointment tonight is the injury to Jason Ruff.”

“The two teams showed passion and energy,” Mannheim’s head coach Bill Stewart said. “It was a good game tonight. We knew this was a difficult place to win. And certainly the way that Ingolstadt played, I thought they played very well. I think we put a lot of pace in the game and they stayed right with us. We certainly gained a lot of respect tonight from the way they played. It’s great to have Ingolstadt in the DEL and I think with the new arena [opening next fall], it’s a positive for German hockey.”

Soccio-hattrick helps Hannover past Schwenningen

Back-to-back third-period scores from Jackson Penney and Victor Gervais lifted the Frankfurt Lions to a 3-2 (1-0, 0-1, 2-1) home win over the Pinguine, extending Krefeld’s losing streak to three games.

Len Soccio scored three goals, two of them on the man-advantage, as the Hannover Scorpions skated past the winless Schwenningen Wild Wings, 6-4 (1-1, 3-1, 2-2) on the road.