Please know I'm not anti German hockey in anyway. The opposite actually. I love what they are doing and think some young Czechs will start heading over there.
But I am seeing a trend with Germany and Switzerland in the U18 stuff and it isn't very encouraging. I'm looking at the draft and it isn't encouraging right now. And I REALLY want both nations to get stronger. Same with my Czechs and Slovaks. Denmark can produce the next Ehlers ASAP. EG. I'm really happy for the Slovaks and a really strong looking crop coming up. I only wish they had some more established veterans to blend with as Halak, Sekera and Chara are near the end.
Don't worry about it, I did not take your post as anti German hockey. I know people get easily offended, but I don't think there was anything wrong with your post.
But as far as German hockey in concerned, I am not too worried yet, because there are reasons for the lack of success in the most recent tournaments, and there are also some encouraging signs even if the results are not there.
Anybody who thought that Germany would quickly close the gap to Switzerland and Slovakia and even catch up to the Czechs was delusional.
We had an amazing crop of players born in 95 with Draisaitl obviously on a whole other level than anybody else. We have always had the occasional really good prospect like Marco Sturm or Marcel Goc but those were few and far between. So after Draisaitl we had a lot of nothing for several years.
Bokk could still turn into a solid player, but he could also bust (as far as the NHL is concerned).
Then we had Seider and the trio of Stützle, Reichel and Peterka in the span of two drafts, which was amazing, but now we are seeing a bit of a regression to the mean. We are not good enough to consistently produce multiple players that will get picked in the first two or three round, but I also don't see many years without drafted players in the future.
The overall level of player development has increased in German hockey, but it has all been a bit derailed by COVID, since the restriction on youth sports in Germany were stricter than in many other countries, which is the main reason I am not too worried, yet, and I hope in 2 or 3 years we will see better results again.
And speaking of results: Even if they lost all those games, there were several games among the losses that were quite a bit closer than I thought they would be. And even in the blowouts they at least generated a few chances. That was not always the case.
