Former ice hockey national coach Marco Sturm has won his competitive debut as head coach in the NHL. Leon Draisaitl suffered a defeat.
At the start of the season, the Boston Bruins won 3-1 against the Washington Capitals. Sturm is the first German head coach in the history of the National Hockey League. He won Olympic silver with the German national team in 2018 and then moved to the NHL as an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Kings.
In the locker room, to the cheers of his players, Sturm received a puck as a souvenir for his first NHL victory and shouted: “Here’s to many more! Many more.” David Pastrnak scored the first main round goal of Sturm’s tenure in the second third against the Capitals. After Tom WIlson’s equalizer, Elias Lindholm and Morgan Geekie scored for the Bruins to win – Pastrnak assisted on both goals.
Draisaitl starts with defeat
Leon Draisaitl started the new NHL season with a special goal, but in the end with a painful defeat. The national ice hockey player from Cologne scored the 400th NHL goal of his career in the Edmonton Oilers’ 3:4 (2:0, 1:2, 0:1) win against the Calgary Flames.
With the numerical advantage in the second third, Draisaitl gave last year’s finalists a 3-0 lead before Calgary equalized and retained the upper hand in the penalty shootout. Draisaitl converted his attempt, but Nazem Kadri had the guests celebrating in the end.
Stützle appeals to Senators
Tim Stützle, on the other hand, sees coming to terms with the early elimination in his first NHL play-offs as the key to being there longer in the new season with the Ottawa Senators. “In the first game of the play-offs, I think we got 40 penalty minutes and actually played almost exclusively outnumbered.”said the 23-year-old in an interview with Sky Sport: “Learning from such mistakes and taking the experiences with us is extremely important for us.”
The Senators had already failed in the first round of the play-offs last season in six games (2:4) against the Toronto Maple Leafs. Stützle now wants to “Of course we get back into the play-offs every year and always go one step further,” he said before the start of the new start at Tampa Bay Lightning on Friday night (1:00 a.m. CEST). But that will happen this year “If anything, even harder.”