Playoff chase began with an important victory

Before the Friday night game against the Augsburger Panther the Eisbären Berlin had seven season games remaining – each one very decisive and hard disputed. Every point gained is important to earn a good playoff spot. After trailing by two goals, twice, the Eisbären Berlin showed a lot of character and defeated the Augsburger Panther 6-4. “This victory was very important for us”, Eisbär Florian Busch stated. “We had a sloppy beginning. We weren´t concentrated at all. After the first period we woke up and stuck to our gameplan. It will be a battle against Nuremberg on Sunday”.

It was a tumultuous first period with many goals. The guest´s opened the scoring with a pair of quick goals at the beginning. Ivan Ciernik found some twine just after 193 seconds into the game. Adrian Grygiel battled hard at the back boards to get the possession of the puck. Ciernik took it over and skated around Berlin´s goalie Petri Vehanen patiently in search of a chance to shoot the puck. He had no problems to open the scoring (03:13). Only 20 seconds later T. J. Trevelyan made it a two goal game. Vehanen had no chance to interfere with his quick release from the centre slot area (03:33). Later on Julian Talbot´s tip in cut the lead in half. Augsburg´s goalie Markus Keller blocked Casey Borer´s slap shot from the blue line. The puck laid free in the goal crease. Talbot reacted quickly and used his chance (08:11). Moments later André Rankel tanked his way through Augsburg´s defense and pushed it over the goal line (10:05). But Berlin´s celebration didn´t last very long. With Antti Miettinen serving a slashing minor penalty James Bettauer used the man advantage to put his name on the scoring sheet. He beat Vehanen with a snapper from the high slot into the right angle (12:40). It got even worse for the home team. Phillip Riefers renewed the two goal lead taking Brett Breitkreuz´s set up in the low slot area and shot it topshelf on the stick side (13:29).

Eisbären had to react and used the intermission to take a deep breath. Back on the ice they found some needed answers to the two goal deficit. Antti Miettinen made it a one goal game at 05:25. His slap shot from the point found a way to hit the net somehow (05:25). Later on Florian Busch cut from the boards into the slot area. Goalie Keller block his shot with his left skate but was unable to interfere with Petr Pohl´s rebound from the left side of the goal crease (12:00). “It is pure frustration. We couldn´t hold on to our lead as we did so many times in this season”, goalie Markus Keller commented.

The teams´ needed quite a while to find some success again. Darin Olver pushed the puck over the goal line and celebrated at 15:35 of the third. But, unfortunately, the referees´ didn´t count it after reviewing the scene. Few moments later Florian Busch succeeded and put his team in the lead for the first time. Petr Pohl carried it into the offensive zone on the right side. Busch received his set up just after entering the zone and snapped it well aimed into the net from the centre slot (16:19). Julian Talbot´s empty netter finalized the 6-4 scoring leaving 01:14 on the clock.

Ken Frege