In the German ice hockey league, three unusual game anniversaries are coming up in the coming days.
National team captain Moritz Müller from the Kölner Haien, Alexander Barta and Philip Gogulla (both Düsseldorf ground floor) are each playing their 1000th game in the top division. The trio has a total of 491 international matches. So far, only eight professionals in DEL history have played at least 1,000 games in the upper house. DEL record player is the longtime Cologne captain Mirko Lüdemann (1199).
On Friday (02/24/2023), exactly ten years to the day after Lüdemann’s 1000th DEL game, the 36-year-old current Haie captain Müller reached the mark in the game against the Iserlohn Roosters. Müller has been active in the DEL for almost 20 years without exception with the sharks.
It all started in a youth hostel
His path to becoming a professional ice hockey player began in a youth hostel. “In a room with three Japanese who were at the confectionery fair,” Moritz Müller told the sports information service. At that time he had just moved to Cologne from Weißwasser.
Because he hardly had any money after ten days at the youth hostel, he got a job at the Haie fan shop, moved to a “one-room apartment right next to the hall in a somewhat dubious house” and “ripped open my ass”.
Trainer Hans Zach discovered him
The Cologne coach at the time, Hans Zach, brought him into the professional team for a week, then for another, “I ran my lungs out”. As a reward there was a DEL sponsorship license for the next season – and the first DEL game a week before Christmas 2003 when he was just 17 years old. In the Rhenish derby against the Düsseldorf EG.
Only the retraining from striker to defender paved the way to becoming a regular player in Cologne, his first World Cup ended in 15th place, he missed the grandiose home World Cup in 2010 on his own doorstep because of an infected wisdom tooth. It wasn’t until he was 26 that he became a regular on international ice – with ten world championships, two Olympic tournaments and 181 international matches. But it wasn’t enough for the championship title.
No end in sight yet
“It hurts and becomes the thing by which you are measured,” Müller told the specialist magazine ice Hockey News: “This season, for the first time, the feeling of going in the right direction is back.” With the Rhinelanders, Müller is on course for the playoffs shortly before the end of the main round.
There is still no end in sight. “It still feels very good at the moment. Everything is there physically, the performance is right and it’s fun,” said Müller. There are still 200 games until the DEL record of his former Cologne role model Mirko Lüdemann.
Two more anniversaries
Düsseldorfer EG is even better off, having had the best team in the league since December and is well on the way to qualifying directly for the playoff quarter-finals for the first time in four years. One of the main reasons for the sporting high is the form of ex-national striker Gogulla, who has been DEG top scorer since his return from EHC Red Bull Munich last year.
The 35-year-old is likely to play his 1000th DEL game against the Schwenninger Wild Wings next Tuesday. Two days earlier, DEG captain Barta is up against the main round champion Munich. The 40-year-old is the only one of the jubilee trio who has already won the German championship once: in 2005 with the Eisbären Berlin.
