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Team Canada cannot stop the DEB selection either
Photo:
TOMS KALNINS / EPA
The German national team achieved a historic victory at the Ice Hockey World Cup of Surprises.
After its perfect start to the tournament with two wins in 22 hours, the team of national coach Toni Söderholm also defeated the 26-time world champion Canada 3-1 (2-1, 0-0, 1-0) and celebrated their first World Cup victory against ice hockey -Motherland for 25 years.
With an especially combative increase over the 9: 4 against Italy and the 5: 1 against Norway, the selection of the German Ice Hockey Federation (DEB) underlined their medal ambitions in Riga. With another success on Wednesday (3:15 p.m. Sport1) against newly promoted Kazakhstan, the group B leaders could already make the quarter-finals perfect.
Mannheim's Stefan Loibl (11th) and Matthias Plachta (12th) as well as their future club colleague Korbinian Holzer (58th) scored the goals for only the third victory in the 39th World Cup duel for the DEB selection, with the young star Lukas Reichel did not play a role as in the first two games.
Nick Paul (19th) scored for the greatly improved world number one, who had previously lost to Latvia (0: 2) and the USA (1: 5).
In addition to the Canadians, the favorites Sweden, Finland and Russia had already slipped against supposedly little ones.
Canada with the youngest World Cup team
During the last German World Cup victory against Canada in Vienna in 1996, Lukas Reichel's father Martin, Leon Draisaitl's father Peter and goal scorer Dieter Hegen stood on the ice.
Good omen: On the way to the sensational Olympic silver in 2018, the DEB team defeated the Canadians 4-3 in the semifinals.
"We want to win the game, no question," defender Moritz Seider had said confidently: "The Latvians showed it, now it's our turn." In the last duel two years ago, there was an 8-1 defeat.
At that time, however, there were still several NHL top players, this time Canada has the youngest World Cup team.
The Canadians, who only scored their first goal in the 111th minute, started with anger in their stomach and pressure on the German goal.
Mathias Niederberger acted confidently as usual and destroyed the chances.
The goals fell on the other side, however: Loibl's leading goal after strong preparatory work by two-time Stanley Cup winner Tom Kühnhackl was followed only 38 later by the 2-0 shot deflected by Plachta, his third tournament goal.
Canada coach Gerard Gallant took a break to hire his team.
Even before the first third siren, Paul hit the ground running.
The game was now tougher, the Germans survived two minutes twice in the second period, 3: 5 undernumbered with great fighting effort.
"It's unbelievable how everyone throws themselves into the shots," said Loibl at Sport1.
The pressure from the Canadians increased, but Niederberger was always the end of the line.
Holzer then pushed the puck into the empty Canadian goal.
aha / sid
