WC: 2021 Germany Roster Talk

[OskarOskarius]

I am confident Germany will surpass all Euros eventually. Especially as soccer is becoming more boring and predictable every year interest in hockey and other sports for that matter will increase.

 

[snipes]

They were pretty essential players so far, especially Seider and Reichel. So: Yes.

Seider is awesome.

German hockey is in a really good spot right now and going forward. Draisaitl is top 3 player in the world. Stutzle is a heck of a talent. As are Riechel, Peterka, etc.

How are the young up and coming players looking that haven’t been drafted? The key is sustaining several draft classes with high end talent.

No reason why Germany shouldn’t be a consistent hockey mid major power pushing teams like Slovakia and Switzerland for the top of the next tier after the big 6. Northern climate, wealthy nation, and a country with a good sporting tradition in other sports. They’re set to be a competitive hockey power for the next while if they keep this up.

German hockey is definitely on the rise, how is the popularity of it there? I know a few posts above talked about but if Germany keeps having the success they’re having, then I would suspect it should grow more.

 

[IceHockeyDude]

They were pretty essential players so far, especially Seider and Reichel. So: Yes.

Great, will be fun to see them. Hopefully their powder is dry today but I wouldn't be sure.

 

[garbageteam]

No reason why Germany shouldn’t be a consistent hockey mid major power pushing teams like Slovakia and Switzerland for the top of the next tier after the big 6. Northern climate, wealthy nation, and a country with a good sporting tradition in other sports. They’re set to be a competitive hockey power for the next while if they keep this up.

To be fair, you can sort of say that for the UK and France as well. Germany is doing something right with their program that other nations aren’t.

 

[snipes]

To be fair, you can sort of say that for the UK and France as well. Germany is doing something right with their program that other nations aren’t.

True.

It’s funny because if you look at the Canadian rosters it’s a lot of players of British/Irish descent that fill the rosters. Although many are several generations removed from their European ancestry.

I mean holy Scots-Irish Canadians with McDavid, MacKinnon, and Crosby down the middle.

But yeah, Germany is doing something right. Although it does seem like the UK might be here for awhile at the top level.

Climate obviously plays a big role, the best hockey nations are the ones with the coldest climates (Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland). The northern USA also gets quite cold in States like Minnesota, Michigan, etc. Although players now for the USA come from all over.

The UK is more of a damp wet cold versus the types of winters that Suomi gets for example which is more like the cold harsh Canadian winters. Russia is obviously very cold in the winters as well. I was talking to a poster from Germany a couple of years back and he said there’s not really the climate for outdoor rinks as much in Germany.

That’s where you really build the grassroots culture in my opinion, it’s on the outdoor rinks. But you need that cold frigid winter to have that.

 

[Harry Waters]

Played third tier for a while. Definitely not a pro It’s a weird league though. Some players actually get decent money, some players are in for the fun and some players get a little compensation for material/equipment. Fringe Semi-Pro I would say.

May I ask if you played there recently or like many years ago? Perhaps it depends on the team, but quite a few teams are employing mainly pros for sure. Perhaps not all of them are full time professionals, but these training and traveling schedules are pretty heavy, aren't they? Anyway, the game starts in a few minutes, I'm excited!

 

[GermanNuck]

May I ask if you played there recently or like many years ago? Perhaps it depends on the team, but quite a few teams are employing mainly pros for sure. Perhaps not all of them are full time professionals, but these training and traveling schedules are pretty heavy, aren't they? Anyway, the game starts in a few minutes, I'm excited!

Last third league game was 11 years ago

 

[Harry Waters]

Last third league game was 11 years ago

Perhaps the Oberliga is more professional now? Also I might have watched a game with you in it, haha.

 

[Bure80]

The UK is more of a damp wet cold versus the types of winters that Suomi gets for example which is more like the cold harsh Canadian winters. Russia is obviously very cold in the winters as well. I was talking to a poster from Germany a couple of years back and he said there’s not really the climate for outdoor rinks as much in Germany.

That’s where you really build the grassroots culture in my opinion, it’s on the outdoor rinks. But you need that cold frigid winter to have that.

It depends on where you are in Germany. We had nights with -25 C and frozen ponds this year. But thats the exception for Germany, you only find in low mountain range or in the alps. All bigger cities have warmer climate. On 800m here we can have 1m snow. For cities like Hamburg or Cologne snow is something special (maybe 5 days every winter).

 

[Kleefeld]

Ice thick enough to play on is even rarer than snow these days. My profile pic is more than 10 years old, taken on the lake in Hannover.
Our only hope is the gulf stream slowing down!

Also, there is not a culture of parents paying thousands of Euros a year for their kids to play a sports in Germany. And rinks are expensive to maintain even though I wonder if new methods would help keeping costs down.

Our rink in the Wedemark (near Hannover) usually shuts down in summer but this summer they won't because they installed solar panels on the roof.

 

[Chapin Landvogt]

I only played for two years from 1985-1987 IIRC at the old outdoor rink at Stellingen.

Sometimes it would rain and the puck would stop all the time during games due to the accumulated puddles.

Our biggest competition was probably BSc Berlin. We also played Hannover, Duisburg, Bremerhaven IIRC.

The best player on our team was defenceman Marc Drenkahnn who I believe played semi pro or pro at some point.

In any event, it was quite a culture clash coming from Canada at the time (they had never seen our neckguards or Cooperall pants before) and we didn’t drink hot tea during intermissions in Canada.

Our entire team ended up getting neck guards and we sort of spread it around Northern Germany as the teams we would play would see us and get them eventually as well.

It’s startling how far Germany has come so fast.

I had an absolute blast going from not speaking a word of German to missing my new friends terribly when I had to move on to Bonn.

I think the highlight for me personally was the pommes with Curry ketchup from the rink Imbiss.

My goodness, Stellingen has been my home rink for ice and inline hockey for over 20 years now. There's a tent-style roof over it nowadays, but the Imbiss is still there and the fries and currywurst are the fave dish to order.

Drenkhahn was right before my time, but he was playing for Hannover when I arrived in Germany and was one of their better players. We played against him in my first season, if I remember correctly.

There hasn't been any tea in the intermission for quite some time, but there were some still doing it at the turn of the century.

Good stuff! I bet a few of our long-time supporters would remember you!

 

[Chapin Landvogt]

You are looking only at attendance. That's not the whole story. Every town has a handball club. My modest hometown of 100000 inhabitants had 6 that I know of, there are likely more as I never bothered to do a lot in the northern part of the city. My quarter, having a measly 5k inhabitants, had one. That simply is not the case for hockey. Often handball at the lower levels is played in schoolgyms. You won't have a lot of people watching, let alone paying, but it's there.

I would denote that there are probably more basketball and volleyball teams nationwide as well, although I did point out above that there are parts of the country where "competitive" handball basically isn't available. That's not really the case for most of Germany with respect to ice hockey.

But there are SERIOUS roadblocks to playing ice hockey that just about all other ball-related team sports don't have, primarily the need for ice rinks and the ability of the players to ice skate before really actually playing the sport.

In light thereof, I believe it's a bit incorrect to look at the nationwide popularity of sports and say a sport is actually "bigger" because there are more registered players at grassroot levels.

I find myself asking why there is a considerably larger scale of professional to semi-professional ice hockey teams basically across all of Germany if the sport isn't bigger than handball, much less the other team sports?

What I've gathered from literature on the topic is that after king soccer by a huge margin, none of the team sports have more money and higher attendance involved than ice hockey, and it's done with a greater width of pro to semi-pro leagues that stretch from Passau to Nordhorn, from Freiburg to Berlin and from Timmendorfer Strand to Lindau.

I won't deny in the least what @Daeni10 wrote about the national handball team and the attention it gets, particularly as a sport that ZDF and ARD televize.

In light of what I see as a fairly big gap in the breadth and attendance in the pro circuits, it seems odd to me handball gets that kind of attention IF ice hockey doesn't.

To be clear, I'd love to see all of them get that level of attention.

 

[Chapin Landvogt]

Yes right! Handball is the number 2 sport in Germany. A popular sport is particularly recognizable when it continues to play a role despite failure. So it is not only popular when the national team is successful. Handball remains interesting in Germany, even if the national team does not live up to expectations. It's the same with football. The dilemma in ice hockey in Germany is always that popularity and media attention only depends on success. As soon as there is failure again, many turn away from ice hockey. There is hardly any interest left. Except of course in the local area. Even if Germany were to become world champions, e.g. Should there be no chance in Beijing, the disappointment is very high in Germany. Everything is very moody. Soccer and handball (on a smaller scale, of course), on the other hand, are "crisis-proof".

It sounds like you're measuring the whole sport based on the national teams. Is the popularity of the sport at the professional level in a country not the much more telling measuring stick?

Do you see handball as being the bigger professional sport in Germany than ice hockey?

That ice hockey doesn't gain the same respect is already clear.

 

[Chapin Landvogt]

TV / National Team attention: 1. Handball, 2. Hockey 3. Basketball
US Pro Leagues: 1. NFL 2. NBA long distance 3. NHL

Oh goodness, you're forgetting Major League Baseball.

NHL is a distant 4th and the soccer league is catching up.

Nonetheless, from an attendance and financial standpoint, the NHL blows away anything Germany has to offer outside of soccer. But it's naturally a different and considerably larger market.

 

[Chapin Landvogt]

The Handball vs Hockey comparison is a little difficult in Germany. Attendance vs registered players, media coverage and club spending, there is a lot to discuss. One difference that I haven't seen mentioned is that there are several cities and even regions in Germany where the local hockey team is the focal point of coverage, attendance, spending, sponsors and so on. I don't think you'll find that as often in Handball. In a way it is easier for hockey teams to be the big thing in some areas because there are less clubs, so if you are in certain regions and want to play/attend hockey, you have to deal with the one professional club. That is hardly the case in Handball.

Also there are a lot more professional players in Hockey. I haven't checked, but I would estimate that below football hockey is the sport in Germany with the second most professionals by far. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the third tier is made up of professionals completely and there are several professional players even in the fourth tier.

Overall I think Handball has more casual followers partly due to the success of the national teams over the years and Handball being a little easier to follow on TV, but hockey has more regular followers which is reflected in attendance. Btw, this is not a casual vs 'real' fans argument, I am just pointing out (perceived) differences.

The third tier still has plenty of "part-time" players who are doing other jobs at the same time, even if they are earning something to play for their respective team.

At the same time, you are right that the 4th and 5th leagues are sprinkled with full-blown pros, as in guys who don't have any other job during the hockey season or if so, it's related to coaching at the youth level, usually in their team's organization.

And I've heard of plenty of situations throughout the lower amateur leagues where guys are getting up to 500-600 EUR a month to play plus sticks and equipment, sometimes also assumed transportation costs.

 

[Chapin Landvogt]

I have never in my life seen a 3rd tier hockey game and I watch hockey for a long time now. I bet I am not alone. It's hard to imagine that they are pros considering that clubs in the first tier are not free from financial woes.

You're missing out. Some of the rawest hockey with very passionate fans and filled with up-n-coming players 16-20.

Some pretty cool jerseys and some wonderful derbys.

 

[Chapin Landvogt]

To be fair, you can sort of say that for the UK and France as well. Germany is doing something right with their program that other nations aren’t.

Yep, I don't think the others have anything going like the current PowerPlay26 program in Germany (which has pros and cons).

There are some stringent guidelines for the clubs at the various junior levels, but the proof is often in the pudding and we're already seeing a new breed of player that just wasn't all that common for much of the last 30-40 years.

 

[Bure80]

You're missing out. Some of the rawest hockey with very passionate fans and filled with up-n-coming players 16-20.

Some pretty cool jerseys and some wonderful derbys.

The picture i posted is from Schönheide. Maybe 15 minutes with car away from me. They have a Regionalliga team. Saw not 1 min hockey there.

 

[Chapin Landvogt]

May I ask if you played there recently or like many years ago? Perhaps it depends on the team, but quite a few teams are employing mainly pros for sure. Perhaps not all of them are full time professionals, but these training and traveling schedules are pretty heavy, aren't they? Anyway, the game starts in a few minutes, I'm excited!

I was involved a few years back and the travel was VERY heavy.

There were 4 practices a week and then one home game and one road game every weekend for 44 game days + playoffs.

The Oberliga Nord covered everything from Tilburg to Berlin, Koblenz to Rostock, and many spots in between.

 

[Eisen]

You're missing out. Some of the rawest hockey with very passionate fans and filled with up-n-coming players 16-20.

Some pretty cool jerseys and some wonderful derbys.

Where are you watching? I'd like to try.

 

[Eisen]

Seider is awesome.

German hockey is in a really good spot right now and going forward. Draisaitl is top 3 player in the world. Stutzle is a heck of a talent. As are Riechel, Peterka, etc.

How are the young up and coming players looking that haven’t been drafted? The key is sustaining several draft classes with high end talent.

No reason why Germany shouldn’t be a consistent hockey mid major power pushing teams like Slovakia and Switzerland for the top of the next tier after the big 6. Northern climate, wealthy nation, and a country with a good sporting tradition in other sports. They’re set to be a competitive hockey power for the next while if they keep this up.

German hockey is definitely on the rise, how is the popularity of it there? I know a few posts above talked about but if Germany keeps having the success they’re having, then I would suspect it should grow more.

We need more youth programs. If that doesn't happen, it's going to be hard.

 

[Chapin Landvogt]

The picture i posted is from Schönheide. Maybe 15 minutes with car away from me. They have a Regionalliga team. Saw not 1 min hockey there.

They've had Oberliga hockey at times as well. It's a pretty solid little hockey town.

Their foreign players are - logically - almost always from the Czech Republic.

 

[Chapin Landvogt]

Where are you watching? I'd like to try.

Seeing as you're posting from Düsseldorf, I'd DEFINITELY recommend checking out a game in Herne.

A few years back, there was some pretty solid Oberliga hockey in Duisburg and Essen, but they'd had their financial problems and have dropped down.

Nowadays, even Hamm has a team and the juniors club from Krefeld is a very interesting project worth checking out.

If you're the travelling type, a weekend seeing the Indians and Scorpions in Hannover is worth the trip and Tilburg, Holland has been a class act in the league for 5 or 6 years now. Seems like more than half of Holland's national team plays for them.

And that's just the Oberliga Nord...

 

[Chapin Landvogt]

We need more youth programs. If that doesn't happen, it's going to be hard.

One of the biggest criticisms of the PowerPlay26 program is that its requirements for getting the funding allotted through the 5-star program are so difficult and costly to meet, that plenty of programs just can't participate. And then they're shut out of certain leagues as well, even if they qualify from a sporting standpoint. We're talking about amount of ice times appropriated for every age group, how many licensed coaches are on the ice with the kids at any given time, that the coaches write down their entire practice plan and submit it, etc.

That then leads to a precious few mega clubs getting ALL the top talent by the time the kids are 16.

But then those kids are all getting the same level of high paced development.

See how that works?

 

[Lambo]

It sounds like you're measuring the whole sport based on the national teams. Is the popularity of the sport at the professional level in a country not the much more telling measuring stick?

Do you see handball as being the bigger professional sport in Germany than ice hockey?

That ice hockey doesn't gain the same respect is already clear.

If you just want to understand what you want to understand? It is absolutely clear that the wretchedness of German ice hockey depends on the national team. It has always been like that