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On your marks, get set, master!
After the final whistle, the polar bears could not be stopped
Photo: O.Behrendt / imago images / Contrast
Frank Hördler was the man of the evening. The goals for Eisbären Berlin, the new German ice hockey champions, were scored by others, but offensive acts are not his main field of activity. Hördler is a defender, a body worker who assures with a honest look that the opponent "ran into his shoulder" when he had to sort himself out after a tough check. This time even the opponents from Wolfsburg had a warm hug ready for Hördler, because he won his eighth title on Friday evening - for which he had been waiting for eight years.
National player Hördler, one of the Olympic silver medal winners from Pyeongchang, stood for the redemption that the Eisbären Berlin experienced when they played the third playoff final of the German Ice Hockey League (DEL) and thus also the best-of-three series against the grizzlies Wolfsburg decided 2-1 for themselves. He is the last remaining player from the golden age of 1985, which made Berlin the number one address in German ice hockey.
In the six years between 2007 and 2013 alone, the polar bears, which emerged from the East Club Dynamo, won five titles.
Hördler's comrades-in-arms had gradually said goodbye, before this season André Rankel, who stood in the empty arena at Berlin Ostbahnhof on Friday evening and regretted not being active anymore ("My worst day since the end of my career"), and Florian Busch, who meanwhile Greenkeeper in a golf club in Upper Bavaria.
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Master cigar: Frank Hördler and Simon Despres
Photo:
O.Behrendt / imago images / Contrast
But Hördler threw himself further in the shots and said at the end with the obligatory cigar and the beer bottle in his hands: "Serge Aubin is similar to Don Jackson." The American Jackson was the coach of the series championship years, then he switched to the Red Bull Group and won three more championships with Munich.
Berlin became a difficult coaching pavement on which even the German ice hockey idol Uwe Krupp stumbled.
The Canadian Aubin came in 2019 and managed to use the special circumstances for himself and his team in his second season.
Modus favored the outsiders
The polar bears are the first corona masters; there had been no play-offs in the previous year. This time they were shortened to a series of three instead of sevens, a mode that favored the outsiders. EHC Munich and Adler Mannheim, the champions since 2015, were eliminated in the quarter and semi-finals, the Berliners did not meet them, their way to the final led via Iserlohn and Ingolstadt. In each series, the polar bears started with a home defeat, but were then followed by two victories. "Nobody hung their head, that was a very big trait," said Hoerdler.
If you regularly followed the DEL on the Magenta Sport platform, the polar bears became good friends.
There was ice hockey every day this season, and after every game in the league, the documentary "DNA Eisbären Berlin" ran with impressions from everyday life in the cabin.
You could see coach Aubin calling the young striker Lukas Reichel "Kid" in front of his teammates, but recognizing the 18-year-old top talent: "He invests a lot of time in me, he's good for young players."
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Polar bear trainer Serge Aubin: "Don't be afraid, just have fun"
Photo:
O.Behrendt / imago images / Contrast
Aubin appears dashing and decisive, the official language is English and "fucking" is the word that underlines many instructions. Aubin sees the relationship between himself and the team “as a partnership”, defender Ryan McKiernan, who was voted the best player in the final series, has already spent a successful time with the coach in Vienna (2017 champions) and says: “We have in not much talked about during the play-offs. Looks were enough. "
The club began to sense that it was your turn again.
Aubin instructed the crew "not to be afraid, but to have fun."
Leo Pföderl finally got carried away by this.
At the end of the main round, the polar bears had announced that the striker would be out of the season due to injury from the front row, but 16 days later Pföderl was back on the ice.
In the third final he scored the 2-1 winning goal.
Economically complicated, badly hit in terms of health
It was the end of a season that was economically difficult for all 14 DEL clubs with no audience income. The health of the polar bears was also badly hit by the pandemic: Already in autumn, when others hadn't had any ice training at all, they experienced the first wave, had to cancel test games, and half the team gradually got hit. In the preparatory tournament for the cup of media partner Deutsche Telekom, the polar bears were knocked off last in their group with Munich, Mannheim and Schwenningen. It wasn't until March, with a tight schedule and further trips to the south, that we »got rolling«, says Hördler.
The polar bears finally fulfilled the requirement from Los Angeles to become a team ready for the title again. The Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), which has operated the former EHC Dynamo since 1999, is based in California. It's a grant business. The last published annual report, which relates to the 2018/19 season, shows a »deficit not covered by equity« of 63.787 million euros, which is likely to have increased further due to the corona crisis. The polar bears are heavily indebted and live on the comfort letter of their "group parent company" AEG, which is renewed annually. In terms of personnel budget (seven million euros), Berlin cannot keep up with Mannheim and Munich (eleven million), but the Anschutz Group does not tolerate mediocrity.Berlin had to declare itself for some placements of the past years before Los Angeles.
So it's all the more beneficial for the club that 2021 will feel like the good old days. With Frank Hördler's shoulder getting in the way of the opponents, with the eighth championship for him and also for Peter John Lee, 65, who has been with the club since 1996, initially as a player and now for 21 years as general manager. And with the first title for Serge Aubin, in which the polar bears see the young Don Jackson.
