European Hockey

I'm going to start this thread, even if I'm the only one who posts to it.

So the German Ice Hockey League (DEL) has started playing already. EHC Eisbären Berlin are two-time defending champions. I decided not to get season tickets this year, but since I live a 20-minute tram ride from the rink, I plan on making it to a lot of games. In the two so far they lost 5-6 to Adler Mannheim (the team that Lance Nethery coached to three straight championships in the 1990s) and just last night beat the Iserlohn Roosters 5-2.

If you ever have a chance to see a pro game in Europe, I heartily recommend it. The cheap seats are designated as standing sections and people not wearing jerseys are in the distinct minority there. There are fan clubs with drums who lead a steady stream of cheers throughout the game. Basically, it's a lot like a good US college hockey atmosphere. (At least based on my experiences in Bern and Berlin.)

The rink where the Eisbären play is actually similar to Lynah in several ways. It fits about 5000 fans, and the sitting and standing sections are arranged in a horseshoe, with the only scoreboard behind the goal on the unoccupied end. However, the home team actually defends that end in the first and third periods. Presumably this is because the horseshoe end has most of the standing places and is therefore loudest and craziest. (In Lynah terms, A, E-K, and O are standing sections while B-D and L-N are sitting.)

Berlin is building a new arena, called O2 World, which will hold about 17,000 fans, which is supposed to open in the summer of 2008, so presumably the Eisbären have only two seasons left in their old rink. I imagine there will be a lot of sentimental regret as the move approaches, considering how many of the cheers seem to date from the days when the club was SC Dynamo Berlin and was one of the two clubs playing in the DDR league. I'm also curious where the other 12,000 spectators are supposed to come from. The new arena will be more centrally located (but still in the Eastern part of town), so I suppose that will help, and perhaps the club and fans will reach out to the "Wessis" to expand the base of support. But I still suspect they'll end up closing the upper deck a lot.

BTW, the Swiss Ice Hockey Federation (SEHV) has also started playing last night; I'll probably be posting updates on Mike Knoepfli's progress with HC Genève-Servette.

I have a good friend who lives in Jens, not far from Bern on the border of the French and German speaking sections of Switzerland. I met him when I did an exchange program over there in '97. He keeps me informed on his favorite club, SC Fribourg, and is a die-hard hockey fan. Even when I was there, he had a jersey and stickers on his car. Someday I will visit in the winter so I can ski, but I will also have to catch a game or two.

Adrian also follows the NHL very closely. I'm not sure if he manages to watch many games, but I know he follows the scores and news on-line.

cth95
I have a good friend who lives in Jens, not far from Bern on the border of the French and German speaking sections of Switzerland. I met him when I did an exchange program over there in '97. He keeps me informed on his favorite club, SC Fribourg, and is a die-hard hockey fan. Even when I was there, he had a jersey and stickers on his car. Someday I will visit in the winter so I can ski, but I will also have to catch a game or two.

I've worn my SC Bern jersey to the two games I've gone to in Berlin, and in the tram ride back from the first one, I noticed a couple wearing HC Fribourg-Gottéron jerseys. SCB and Gottéron are pretty serious rivals (although SCB's arch-rival is the other NLA club from the Canton of Bern, SC Langnau), so it was kind of an amusing moment when I looked at their jerseys, then down at mine, then back at theirs. When the tram thinned out, we ended up talking (I in German, the guy in something between German and Swiss German) about Swiss hockey, and he explained how Bern pays their players under the table and how their fans like to start fights after the game. But otherwise it was a nice conversation.

Anyway, it turns out they were just passing through on holiday and decided to catch a game while they were in town. Which is sort of like how I saw my first Eisbären game while visiting the Albert Einstein Institute in 2000.