Frankfurt / Main (dpa / lhe) - The "seventh man" should help the Frankfurt ice hockey lions this Friday (7.30 p.m.) to their second home win of the season over DEL table leaders EHC Red Bull Munich. "The hall almost exploded the first time," Franz-David Fritzmeier, the sports director of Hessen, recalled the duel on September 30 at an online press conference on Thursday. "That was the key to our victory back then." Bayern, the 42-year-old continued, "are the dominant team in the league and the only one that's really overly difficult to beat." In Frankfurt, Munich had suffered their only away bankruptcy to date in a penalty shootout.
The signs for the lions are positive: According to press spokeswoman Jana Duderstadt, ticket sales for the almost 7,000 spectator ice rink on Ratsweg indicate that the arena is sold out. If the fans didn't make the desired impact, the Lions would have to wait for their first win of the year.
On Monday they lost 5-3 to the Iserlohn Roosters, on Wednesday they lost 3-2 in a penalty shoot-out to the third-placed Mannheimer Adler. After regulation time, the score was 2-2 after a Brett Breitkreuz equalizer in the last few seconds of the final period. In addition, another difficult duel awaits the promoted team on Sunday (4.30 p.m.) at ERC Ingolstadt, second in the table.
The lions shouldn't be uneasy even after a weekend without a win. "That wouldn't be dramatic, because we're playing the top three in the league one after the other, who are also among the top six in terms of finances," said Fritzmeier. "Everything would still be good for us after that. We have to keep scoring consistently and learn something new with every game."
The squad planning for the next season has been going on behind the scenes since the international break in November. "The whole team will not stay together," revealed Fritzmeier. "But none of them have been written off yet, and we haven't really extended many contracts either."
