NHL: Germans in the NHL and AHL Discussion

smitty10

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Aug 6, 2009
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Toronto
Hey guys, didn't see a thread for this. Just thought it'd be nice to have a section dedicated to the Germans who are playing in North American professional leagues.

As a Leafs fan I'm getting to watch a lot of Korbinian Holzer out there. The guy looks great and has been playing top pairing minutes with captain Dion Phaneuf. He's calm, steady and playing with a mean streak. Holzer's also accumulated 2 goals in his first 5 games this season, so things are really looking up for him.

NHL
BOS Dennis Seidenberg
BUF Christian Ehrhoff
BUF Jochen Hecht
BUF Alexander Sulzer
FLA Marcel Goc
SJ Thomas Greiss
TOR Korbinian Holzer

AHL
ADK Marcel Noebels
CHA Justin Krueger
HER Phillip Grubauer
WBS Tom Kuhnhackl
 

Heinz84

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Aug 4, 2012
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Im very pleased with Holzers first NHL games. Great he picked up a couple of goals straight away, as he normally isnt a big goal scorer. But he adjusts very well to NHL hockey. He was a bit lucky McGinn wasnt injured in this check, so he managed to avoid a suspension.

I really hope Sulzer will establish himself this year as a regular with the Sabres. He played pretty well after the trade last year. If you combine last season and the beginning of this year, he scored 6 goals for Buffaloe in 27 games. Hopefully he comes back into the lineup soon after being a healthy scratch last night.
 

smitty10

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Aug 6, 2009
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Toronto
Im very pleased with Holzers first NHL games. Great he picked up a couple of goals straight away, as he normally isnt a big goal scorer. But he adjusts very well to NHL hockey. He was a bit lucky McGinn wasnt injured in this check, so he managed to avoid a suspension.

I really hope Sulzer will establish himself this year as a regular with the Sabres. He played pretty well after the trade last year. If you combine last season and the beginning of this year, he scored 6 goals for Buffaloe in 27 games. Hopefully he comes back into the lineup soon after being a healthy scratch last night.

Sulzer has been playing very well for Buffalo, but Ruff is an idiot and scratching him every once in a while. It pisses off Sabres fans and they can't understand why he's being sat. That being said, I think he's definitely established himself as a top 6 guy and if Buffalo decides to let him walk at the end of the year he'll get a one-way deal elsewhere.

Germany will have a good top 4 at the 2014 Olympics:

Ehrhoff-Sulzer
Seidenberg-Holzer

These guys should eat up some big minutes and make Greiss' life a bit easier in goal.
 

BalticWarrior

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Apr 28, 2012
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Sulzer has been playing very well for Buffalo, but Ruff is an idiot and scratching him every once in a while. It pisses off Sabres fans and they can't understand why he's being sat. That being said, I think he's definitely established himself as a top 6 guy and if Buffalo decides to let him walk at the end of the year he'll get a one-way deal elsewhere.

Germany will have a good top 4 at the 2014 Olympics:

Ehrhoff-Sulzer
Seidenberg-Holzer

These guys should eat up some big minutes and make Greiss' life a bit easier in goal.

Ahhh,you might want to check up on that,chief
 

Gimor

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Mar 11, 2013
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Grubauer looked decent last night for Hershey against the Senators. He's 8-5-0 but I think he has played better than his record shows for the Bears.
 

Maverick41

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Yepp. Terrible that they didn't make it.
Unfortunately this could have been a wake up call to really make some changes in German hockey to improve for the future.
But it will end up as just another wasted opportunity.

Back to main topic:
I don't think Grubauer is ready for the NHL yet and won't be for at least another year.
I believe it would be best for him if he got at least one more full season in the AHL as a starter.
 

Gimor

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Mar 11, 2013
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Unfortunately this could have been a wake up call to really make some changes in German hockey to improve for the future.
But it will end up as just another wasted opportunity.

Back to main topic:
I don't think Grubauer is ready for the NHL yet and won't be for at least another year.
I believe it would be best for him if he got at least one more full season in the AHL as a starter.

I completely agree with you about Grubauer. He needs to complete at least one more season in the AHL as a starter. It's tough in minor league hockey with all the call-ups to be a concrete starter.
 

ForumNamePending

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Mar 31, 2012
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Unfortunately this could have been a wake up call to really make some changes in German hockey to improve for the future.
But it will end up as just another wasted opportunity.

Not to take this totally off topic...

I get that missing out on the Olympics is bad and from what I gather just about everything related to German hockey is a basketcase but are things totally hopeless?

I did a quick count and one thing I have noticed is that this year there were over 30 predominantly German trained players (might be wrong on a couple) who finished in the top 100 in DEL scoring. A decade ago there was only about 10 and 5 years ago less than 20. Perhaps some of this can be contributed to a lower import limit (I don't know if it has changed) or more talented imports going to different leagues, but even so isn't the fact that more German players, even if the level of play in the league might have dropped a bit, are getting a chance to play a significant role in the DEL a positive sign?
 

Tronador

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I have to repeat my comment that I don't understand, why there are only a few German prospects who try to get a spot in other top junior leagues, e.g., in Sweden, Finland, Switzerland or CZE.
 

Sanderson

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Sep 10, 2002
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Hamburg, Germany
Players from those countries don't leave for other countries either, so why should Germans?

A junior aged player leaving his country is an extremely rare event, regardless of nationality.
 

Pominville Knows

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Sep 28, 2012
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Unfortunately this could have been a wake up call to really make some changes in German hockey to improve for the future.
But it will end up as just another wasted opportunity.

No what it is about is the same discrimination that Slovakia suffered for the 1998 and 2002 olympics. They did'nt get to qualify using their best players, which would be somewhat allright if it was for the World Championships where teams dont get to use all their players, but downright embarrassing when knowing Germanys best players never got the chance and will be at home in front of their TV:s when the games gets going. Obviously there should'nt have been a qualifying tourney at all, that would at least have been more fair. Or they could have done it like with Slovakia where as i remember it folks like Peter Bondra right before the games started flew back and forth over the Atlantic trying to both qualify and play NHL games at the same time. They never played with their best team though, and did not make it through to the preliminary round.
 
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slovakiasnextone

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Jul 7, 2008
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No what it is about is the same discrimination that Slovakia suffered for the 1998 and 2002 olympics. They did'nt get to qualify using their best players, which would be somewhat allright if it was for the World Championships where teams dont get to use all their players, but downright embarrassing when knowing Germanys best players never got the chance and will be at home in front of their TV:s when the games gets going. Obviously there should'nt have been a qualifying tourney at all, that would at least have been more fair. Or they could have done it like with Slovakia where as i remember it folks like Peter Bondra right before the games started flew back and forth over the Atlantic trying to both qualify and play NHL games at the same time. They never played with their best team though, and did not make it through to the preliminary round.

Well, it's not like Germany was the only country to suffer from this in the qualification even though they lacked more players in quentity than Austria, I'd dare to say that it makes one hell of a difference whether Vanek plays fpr Austria or doesn't too. The thing is that Germany should have been able to beat a European selection of Austria with their European selection, because even with the players that they have in NHL/AHL what they have in Europe is better than what Austria has at leats on paper (I don't think that even many Austrians believe otherwise). But we all know that games aren't played on paper.

As for Slovakia juggling all those players in 98 and 02 that actually makes the situation even worse (though granted Slovakia had more NHL/AHL players available than Germany does today at that time), because it meant that all they did was just wait for whomever would fly in instead of trying at least a half assed effort to buid a team from what they had available and in every game they had pretty much a different team, which was a huge part of why it all ended in the disaster it did. Also you can't forget that in 98 and 02 the qualification was sort of aready a part of the Olympics proper and not played months in advance.
 

Pominville Knows

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Sep 28, 2012
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Well, it's not like Germany was the only country to suffer from this in the qualification even though they lacked more players in quentity than Austria, I'd dare to say that it makes one hell of a difference whether Vanek plays fpr Austria or doesn't too. The thing is that Germany should have been able to beat a European selection of Austria with their European selection, because even with the players that they have in NHL/AHL what they have in Europe is better than what Austria has at leats on paper (I don't think that even many Austrians believe otherwise). But we all know that games aren't played on paper.
It does'nt matter if they should have beaten Austria with their european based talent or not, the Olympic games are for every countrys best not their second best rated players, and having a qualification round where the best players are absent makes the whole qualification into something different then what it's meant to be. If one would want to drag it to it's extreme it's like having each countrys U20 team try to qualify their A-Team to the Olympics. The Germans were robbed, but bare in mind that i do know that they very well could have lost anyway, the problem is they did'nt even get a chance to fail with their best personel, which by the way as i have described also was the only team they should have played with.

As for Slovakia juggling all those players in 98 and 02 that actually makes the situation even worse (though granted Slovakia had more NHL/AHL players available than Germany does today at that time), because it meant that all they did was just wait for whomever would fly in instead of trying at least a half assed effort to buid a team from what they had available and in every game they had pretty much a different team, which was a huge part of why it all ended in the disaster it did.
Correct.

Also you can't forget that in 98 and 02 the qualification was sort of aready a part of the Olympics proper and not played months in advance.
Well obviously i did not forget that, but you're right that it might have been even worse then playing with only second rated players, although the team management obviously did have a choice to not bring in emergency players from the NHL.
 
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slovakiasnextone

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Jul 7, 2008
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Slovakia
I'm sorry, but Germany were not robbed. They would have been robbed if they were the only ones to have to play under such conditions. But they weren't. Austra who beat them was missing four of their top players too in Vanek, Grabner, Nodl and Pock.

I wish just as you that ALL teams could play the qualification with their absolute top team, but it's all in the hands of the NHL sadly, so we're likely not seeing it happening anytime this century...
 

Pominville Knows

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Sep 28, 2012
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Down Under
I'm sorry, but Germany were not robbed. They would have been robbed if they were the only ones to have to play under such conditions. But they weren't. Austra who beat them was missing four of their top players too in Vanek, Grabner, Nodl and Pock.

I wish just as you that ALL teams could play the qualification with their absolute top team, but it's all in the hands of the NHL sadly, so we're likely not seeing it happening anytime this century...
Well then they should abolish the qualification since results in the WC are at least a bit more fair. But as far as i'm concerned Austria is NOT as robbed as Germany is, since they actually qualified and will get to play with Vanek and company in Sochi 2014.
 

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