The German national ice hockey team gets a new national coach: DEL icon Harold Kreis takes over the team as successor to the successful Finn Toni Söderholm. Surprisingly, he announced his immediate departure last November.
Harold Kreis succeeds Toni Söderholm as national ice hockey coach. This was announced by the German Ice Hockey Federation (DEB). Kreis, who previously worked as a coach for the Schwenninger Wild Wings in the German Ice Hockey League (DEL), will receive a contract until 2026. The assistant coach will be former national player Alexander Sulzer. Söderholm, originally given a contract until 2026, surprisingly stopped after four years in mid-November and switched to top Swiss club SC Bern.
"I've experienced a lot in my career, but working as a national coach is something very special for me. It's a great honor for me," said Kreis. "We are very happy about today. We had a requirement profile after Toni Söderholm left us. This decision is very, very positive for the future of German ice hockey," said DEB Vice President Andreas Niederberger. Kreis is considered a coach who prefers defensive ice hockey, Söderholm had played much more offensively and was successful with it.
The 64-year-old circle is not a blank slate on the DEB bench. Born in Canada, he already worked at the 2010 home World Cup in Cologne and Mannheim and the following editions in 2011 and 2012 as an assistant coach for the DEB selection. This was followed by coaching positions at the Adlern Mannheim, for whom he was a player almost 900 times in 19 years, EV Zug in Switzerland, Düsseldorfer EG and most recently in Schwenningen. Kreis celebrated his greatest successes in the gang in 2006 with HC Lugano and in 2008 with the ZSC Lions, which he led to the Swiss championship as head coach.
Söderholm, who succeeded Olympic silver medalist Marco Sturm in December 2018, had led the national team to the quarter-finals at the World Cup in Finland with the best preliminary round in history. In November, the 44-year-old successfully defended the Germany Cup in Krefeld with the DEB team. At his first World Cup in 2019, the Finn reached the quarterfinals with the DEB selection after a strong preliminary round, two years later the German team even stormed into the semifinals and climbed to fifth place in the world rankings. The early end at the Olympic Games in Beijing in the play-off for the quarter-finals was the first setback.
Before extending his contract in March, Söderholm had already toyed with a change to day-to-day business at a club - for a long time in the spring it had looked as if Söderholm would leave the DEB. He sat in on the Florida Panthers last fall and made contacts in the NHL, and at the eight-time German champions Mannheim he was considered a hot candidate to succeed the fired Pavel Gross. Then he took the option in Bern - his legacy is now in circles.
