Raven-black middle third: Eislöwen lose to Nuremberg 1:5

Raven-black middle third: Eislöwen lose to Nuremberg 1:5

The 15th matchday in the PENNY DEL took place on Wednesday evening and the Dresdner Eislöwen met the Nürnberg Ice Tigers. As eisloewen.de reports, head coach Niklas Sundblad stuck to the tried-and-tested squad from the last two games, in which Jussi Olkinuora started in goal. The game started heatedly and both teams found good opportunities right from the start, but goalkeeper Niklas Treutle from Nuremberg and Olkinuora kept their boxes clean.

The Eislöwen were unable to take advantage of a numerical advantage after a penalty against Luis Üffing. In the 16th minute, however, it was Justus Böttner who put the Ice Tigers in the lead with a goal. Evan Barratt from Nuremberg later received a penalty, but this time too the Ice Lions failed to score. Bad luck for Dresden: Niklas Postel had to leave the ice early due to an injury.

Raven-black middle third

The middle third was disastrous for the Ice Lions. After a majority of 14 seconds, Dresden failed to score. Instead, it was Charlie Gerard who increased Nuremberg's lead to 2-0 in the 24th minute. The Ice Tigers didn't let up and scored more goals through Tyler Spezia (31st), Greg Meireles (34th) and Owen Headrick (35th), so that the Ice Lions went into the second break with a 0:5 deficit. That was a real black third for the Dresden team, who couldn't get anything together in this phase.

In the final period, coach Sundblad Olkinuora swapped for Janick Schwendener in goal. The change initially did not seem to have the desired effect. But in the 44th minute, Drew LeBlanc scored the goal to make it 1:5, which was confirmed by video evidence. Unfortunately, that was the only sense of success for the Dresden team that evening. In the 50th minute, mutual penalties for excessive harshness created even more tension on the ice, but the score remained unchanged.

The next encounters

The Ice Tigers will continue their game on October 31st when they meet the Straubing Tigers. The Eislöwen also have to play against the Iserlohn Roosters on November 2nd and hope to learn from the mistakes of this game in order to secure the next points. Let's take a look at how the Ice Tigers' season went: It's clear that the last few games were always characterized by close or highly dramatic encounters, just like the duel against the Ice Lions, which ended 1:5, as sportschau.de notes.

So it remains to be hoped that the Ice Lions can learn lessons from this pitch-black middle third and build on their strengths again in the coming games. After all, the chances of asserting themselves in the league are far from over.