Krefeld penguins in the German ice hockey league: victims of the quotient – sport

The German Ice Hockey League (DEL) is facing “one of the greatest unsportsmanlike acts in its history”. However, the general outrage about this has so far been limited, because this is initially only the opinion of the managing director Sergey Saveljev from the Krefeld Penguins. The 25-year-old Latvian and his Lower Rhine club are on the verge of being the first ice hockey team to be relegated from the DEL since the Kassel Huskies in 2006. At that time, the descent was subsequently abolished.

However, it was recently reintroduced, and Krefeld is in danger of becoming the first actual victim of the rule that was reintroduced last season (and immediately suspended again because of the pandemic) – of all things in a season whose final table will give a crooked picture due to a number of Corona game failures .

The last three teams in the table (Iserlohn, Schwenningen, Krefeld) will end the season next Sunday with 54, 55 and 56 games, respectively, because there is no longer enough time to repeat every missed game. A quotient (points through games) therefore serves as a point reference. This, as well as a few game failures, for which they themselves are not to blame, consider the Krefeld team to be “distortion of competition” and, as a precaution, have announced that they will take steps under sports law against their impending relegation.

Legal counsel Voigt does not speak of a “lawsuit”: he says they only want to explore all options

However, it’s not that far yet. With their 2-1 victory after a penalty shootout on Sunday evening in Bietigheim, the penguins avoided relegation for the time being. This Tuesday evening they receive the penultimate Schwenningen in their own hall and could postpone the impending fate again with a win. The three remaining games of the season on Wednesday in Mannheim, on Friday in Iserlohn and again against Mannheim on Sunday take the form of an act of violence. “We just want to fight to the end,” says Saveljev, meaning both in sporting and legal terms.

Penguine legal counsel Matthias Voigt does not like to talk about an announced “lawsuit”. “We’ll just try to exhaust our legal options,” he says, somewhat soothingly. The problem behind this is that the Penguins, like all the other clubs, agreed to the quotient rule before this season and that they don’t want to be seen as bad losers in the event of relegation.

According to Voigt, one would want to explore one’s options before the DEL arbitration board. Voigt refrains from giving a clear answer to the relevant question of whether Krefeld would then possibly even go before a civil court. “We would at least weigh up the opportunities and risks,” he says. Such civil proceedings could drag on over the summer and present both the club and the league with unsightly and lengthy imponderables.

In the meantime, they are already planning two tracks in Krefeld. They were able to wrestle one or the other player into a commitment for the second division. In the DEL2, historic duels against Landshut and Kaufbeuren beckoned, but the loss of the derbies against Düsseldorf and Cologne could not be compensated emotionally or economically.

In general, the disappearance of Krefeld from the DEL map would be a turning point, because along with Augsburg, Berlin, Cologne, Mannheim and Nuremberg, they are one of only six locations that have consistently played in the highest German class since the DEL was founded in 1994 . In general, Krefeld is one of the most traditional German ice hockey locations. On March 12th it was exactly 70 years ago that the Krefelder EV became German champion in 1953; The German Ice Hockey Federation was founded in Krefeld in 1963, and in 2003 the penguins celebrated winning the DEL title.

The relegation would be a setback for the ice hockey enthusiasm in the city. Saveljev, meanwhile, hopes that if necessary a season in the DEL2 (including the longed-for resurgence) could also represent an emotional new beginning for the recently shaken club.