Red Bull Salzburg is traveling north with a lot of confidence! – Hockey-News.info – All news about national and international ice hockey
EC Red Bull Salzburg continues the group games of the Champions Hockey League at the weekend with away games against the Stavanger Oilers (Friday, 6 p.m., CHL.com) and Ilves Tampere (Sunday, 3 p.m., ORF Sport+). After the extremely close home games, Salzburg are expecting two hard-fought games again, but they also want to score as many points as possible away from home.
The first two CHL games in the Salzburg Eisarena were really tough. Last Thursday, the Red Bulls beat Norway’s champions Stavanger Oilers 3-2 after overtime. Two days later, on Saturday, they narrowly lost 3-2 in extra time to Finland’s Ilves Tampere. The Red Bulls are in third place in Group E. However, all teams are close together; Stavanger leads after two games with 4 points, followed by Fribourg-Gottéron and Salzburg with 3 points each and Ilves with 2 points.
In the fight for a playoff ticket – the first two teams in each group reach the KO phase – points are even more important in the next game in Norway. Against Stavanger, the Red Bulls want to play like they did in the first game, but want to be more efficient. The Red Bulls quickly recorded twice as many shots on goal as the Norwegians.
“We saw in both games that we can play very well. We’re going to Norway and Finland now to win two games,” defender Dominique Heinrich leaves no doubt about the goal of this trip. “We should improve our power play and we allowed our opponents to break away here and there. But we want to build our performance on the good performances of the last few games.”
The fact that the Stavanger Oilers could have an advantage with the slightly smaller ice surface – in Norway’s top league, NHL-size games are sometimes played – is less of a problem for the 32-year-old veteran. “I don’t think too much will change for us. We just have to adapt to the new situation as quickly as possible.” The current table situation is more exciting: “Yes, it can’t get any tighter. But we still want to finish first in the group games and then go into the playoffs.”
The Red Bulls have one more off-ice practice session tomorrow morning and then travel to Stavanger. The convalescents Paul Huber, Ty Loney and Philipp Wimmer are not on board. Both games will be broadcast live.
Champions Hockey League
Stavanger Oilers vs EC Red Bull Salzburg
Fri, 09/09/2022; Stavanger, DNB Arena, 18:00
Youtube channel of the CHL | delayed ORF Sport+
Ilves Tampere-EC Red Bull Salzburg
So, 09/11/2022; Tampere, Nokia Arena, 15:00 (CEST)
ORF Sport+
www.redbulls.com, Photo: GEPA-Images/Jasmin Walter