Oh boy, good thing I made my rankings before this game. Finals score 11-1 Finland.
Let's start with a little, the good, the bad and the ugly.
The Good:
The Bad:
- Finland in the first period
- Jan-Luca Augst
The Ugly:
- Everyone else on the German team
The Grotesque: (This one requires an additional category)
- Tobias Krestan
- The special teams
Now, to put things a little into perspective. They weren't any worse than many of the U16 teams before them, when they played these games against Finland. Blowouts are the norm here.
And while Krestan had a really bad game, the only reason I am singling him out is because I know he can be so much better. He should be the best player on the team, but could not deliver and was more a liability out there than an asset. I don't know if he got hurt or benched in the third, but I did not see him play. Maybe he was hurt going into the game, or maybe it was just one of those days that happen even to the best, but it was very disappointing.
But, I don't like being a negative guy when it comes to our prospects, so I'll focus on the silver linings and the few bright spots. First of I like the group of defensemen. This may come as a surprise in a 1-11 loss, but there is actuall quite a bit of potential on the back end, in my opinion.
I already had high, or at least elevated expectations for Rolsing, Kettler and Hackert, and while they all struggled with the sustained pressure from Finland and the often lacking support from the forwards, they all showed glimpses of what might be, if their development goes right.
The big surprise for me was Jan-Luca Augst. I had seen him once before, but did not pay him much mind back then. Too small and not skilled enough to compensate for that, were my thoughts. Hi is still really small, but his skills have improved, but more than anything else it is his compete level and IQ that stood out for me. Going back to my previous post, he was the one guy on the team that did not look like he had taken some valium after the first period.
Not sure how much NHL upside there is, but I could definitely see him having a very nice career in the DEL. It's just the one game, but based on that I'd say Yannic Seidenberg would be his ceiling, and that is nothing to sneeze at. I will certainly be following him more closely from now on.
Another guy I liked, and probably the only one liked better in periods 2 and 3 than in period 1 was Aurelius Pizka. He had his gaffes, but played a decent overall game. He even tried to be physical and on occasion succeeded unlike most of the other defensemen. I want to see more of him, before I make up my mind, but could be an interesting guy going forward.
The forwards were even more outmatched than the defense. Really difficult to pick one as "the best forward". Lukas Greil showed some speed and skill along with some tenacity. At times he reminded me a little bit of Kevin Bicker, with more skill but less grit. Quirin Schlager tried, but mostly failed in making skill plays. At times I liked the play of both Mats Geppert and Luis Becker, two players I was not familiar with before. But aside form those good stretches (mostly in the first period), they were struggling like everyone else.
Erik Michel looked pretty good in the first period, but mostly disappeared afterwards. Arel Albert flashed some skill a few times but not a lot came of it.
That is about as positive as I can be with regard to this game, but it deserves to end on a negative and the biggest negative were the special teams after the first period. They scored a powerplay goal on their second powerplay opportunity, going 1 for 3 on the man advantage in the first period. They only got one more opportunity and on most power plays they rarely entered the attacking zone.
The pk got progressively worse. They took two penalties in the first period which overlapped for 54 seconds of 5-on-3, and they managed to kill off both. They took four more penalties the rest of the way and Finland scored on all of them.
They took 8 minutes worth of penalties in the 2nd and 3rd period but only spent a total of 2:43 minutes on the pk.
It took the Finns 1:27 minutes to score on their first pp of the second period, then 29 and 32 seconds respectively on their second and third powerplay in the middle frame. On the final pp of the game in the third period, the German penalty kill lasted all of 15 seconds.
I wonder if I should dare watching the game tomorrow as well.
