Munich, Germany - The revamped Frankfurt Lions continued to shine on gameday 4 in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL) Sunday, crushing the winless Düsseldorfer EG at home and moving into second place in the standings. Meanwhile, two possible title contenders met at the KölnArena where the Kölner Haie entertained the league-leading Berlin Eisbären.

Florian Keller tallied a pair of goals as the Berlin Eisbären defended the league-lead with a 4-2 (3-1, 0-1, 1-0) road win over the struggling Kölner Haie. Berlin improved to 4-0 while Cologne fell to 1-3 (including 1 regulation tie). The Eisbären took a 1-0 lead 3:14 into the campaign when Marc Beaufait sped into the Haie zone and chipped the puck to Keller who knocked it home. Haie defender Jeff Dessner tied the score at 1-1 on the man advantage three minutes later. Berlin reclaimed the lead when Keller scored his second of the afternoon on the power-play at 11:02. With heavy traffic in front of the Haie net, Rob Leask deflected a shot from Denis Pederson to past goalie Chris Rogles to double the Eisbären lead to 3-1 at the first intermission. Eduard Lewandowski brought the Haie back into the game midway through the middle frame. The game was on the line until youngster Florian Busch sealed Berlin’s road win with an empty-net-tally 13 seconds from the final horn.

Frankfurt routs Düsseldorf

Three days after shocking the Mannheim Adler 5-0 on the road, the thriving Frankfurt Lions improved to 3-1 under new head coach Rich Chernomaz with a convincing home win over the struggling Düsseldorfer EG Metro Stars (0-4). Behind four powerplay goals, Frankfurt routed the DEG 6-1 (3-1, 2-0, 1-0). Forward Pat LeBeau tallied three assists. Frankfurt moved into second place in the standings, trailing Berlin by two points. Defenseman Paul Stanton opened the scoring 8:50 into the contest, hammering a one-timer past DEG netminder Alex Jung on the two-man advantage. Michael Hackert doubled the lead on a solo effort, beating Jung with a nice deke to make it 2-0 on another power-play goal. Defender Francois Bouchard came up with the third power-play goal of the opening period, blasting home a one-timer from the right point with 65 seconds left to give Frankfurt a commanding 3-0 lead at the first intermission. Düsseldorf started to press early in the middle frame but failed to score. On the other end of the ice, defender Jonas Stöpfgeshoff ripped a slapshot from the point through the five-hole of screened goaltender Jung to make it 4-0 on the Lions’ fourth-straight power-play goal 5:33 into the second. The Metro Stars finally got on the scoreboard when center Clayton Young deflected Tommy Jakobsen’s shot from the right point past Lions goalie Ian Gordon. Frankfurt wasn’t finished, though, and added two more. Thriving Christian Kohmann made it 5-1 with 4:18 left in the second, knocking home the rebound after a shot by Jesse Belanger. Markus Jocher capped the score at 6-1 midway through the third. Coming from the left wing, he took advantage of a great block by Mike Harder's in front of the net, pulled to the right slot and out-waited DEG goalie Jung.

Wins for Nuremberg and Augsburg

Marian Cisar scored his first DEL goal with 2:26 to go as the Nürnberg Ice Tigers downed the Kassel Huskies (1-3-(1)) on the road, 2-1 (0-1, 1-0, 1-0). Mikael Wahlberg had given Kassel the lead late in the first, but Nuremberg scored the equalizer five minutes into the middle frame when Benjamin Barz scored on the rebound of a shot from Stephane Julien. The Ice Tigers are in the third place with a record of 3-1.

Xavier Delisle converted the game-winning shot as the Augsburger Panther downed the Iserlohn Roosters 3-2 (1-0, 1-1, 0-1, 1-0) at home after penalty shootout. Panther defender Arvids Rekis tallied two assists. After goals from Christopher Oravec and Shawn Carter for Ausgburg and Matt Higgins for Iserlohn, the Panther had a 2-1 lead at the game’s midway point. Iserlohn’s Scott King scored with 8:32 to go in the third the force the shootout decision. Bernie Lapointe’s Panther improved to 3-1, Dave Whistle’s Roosters are 2-2-(1).

Hamburg rebounds with big road win, Hanover improves to 2-2

The Hamburg Freezers bounced back from Friday’s embarrassing 3-1 home loss to expansion Freiburg, blanking defending champions Krefeld Pinguine on the road, 5-0 (1-0, 1-0, 3-0). Andrew Schneider scored a goal and two assists and former Pinguine sniper Brad Purdie had two helpers in his return to Krefeld. Hamburg, which also got goals from Bobby House, Peter Abstreiter, Jacek Plachta and defender Darren Van Impe, finished off Krefeld with a defense-first strategy and dangerous counterattacks. The Freezers improved to 3-2 while the Krefeld Pinguine are 2-2.

A hat trick from Jiri Zelenka and three assists from veteran defenseman Bedrich Scerban was not enough as expansion team Freiburger Wölfe lost 6-3 (2-1, 2-2, 2-0) to the Hannover Scorpions at home. Defender Rikard Franzen (2), Zdenek Nedved, David Haas, Len Soccio and Matthias Lööf scored for Hanover which is 2-2 after two straight victories. At 1-3, Freiburg is near the bottom of the DEL table, two points ahead of the winless Düsseldorfer EG Metro Stars.