Kai Wissmann was a polar bear in Berlin for ten years. Now the defender has ventured to North America and wants to become a brown bear in Boston. With the Bruins, the 25-year-old is fighting for a place in the NHL squad.
Kai Wissmann is one of many at the Boston Bruins training camp. Someone who gives his all on the ice every day and who hopes to impress the coaches with his performances. That’s always the case at this time of year for the 32 clubs in North America’s professional league, the NHL. Talented young players or older players like the 25-year-old Wissmann get their chance in the pre-season. In the next few days it will be decided who can stay, who will be sent to the farm team and who doesn’t need to come back at all.
NHL in Boston or AHL in Providence?
Wissmann, that much is already certain, can stay. The defender has signed a one-year contract. However, this contract applies to both the Boston Bruins in the NHL and the Providence Bruins from the second-tier American Hockey League, AHL. Whether NHL or AHL – he doesn’t even think about that, says Wissmann in an interview with rbb|24. Rather, he looks from “day to day and training to training.” And if it doesn’t work out right away with a place in the upper house, then “I won’t despair, I’ll just keep working hard and hoping for my chance.”
Wissmann was a regular in Berlin and was one of the defenders with the most ice time in the past season. In Boston none of that guarantees him anything. Nevertheless, Wissmann has a chance. Because with Charlie McAvoy and Matt Grzelcyk two seeded defenders will be missing at the beginning of the season. Both are still in rehab after surgery. Thus, players from the actual second row become the first defensive pair – and defenders from the third row advance to the second line.
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Same hometown as Dennis Seidenberg
And that’s why the training camp is looking for two players for the third row. “There are a lot of people who want these places, so the intensity is correspondingly high,” says Wissmann. For him, “a lot is new”, but of course it’s all “a lot of fun.” And overall, “I’m just happy that I can be here,” Wissmann emphasizes.
What hardly any of his teammates know: the newcomer from “Germany” has a common past with the one who was the last German to date under contract with the Bruins. Which was a very important piece of the puzzle when Boston became champion again in 2011 after 39 years. And who, in his six years at the club, perfectly embodied the Bruins DNA with his tough and uncompromising style of play: Dennis Seidenberg. Like him, Wissmann comes from Villingen-Schwenningen. And like Seidenberg, he also started ice hockey at the local SERC.
Neither of them know each other personally, but the fact that they come from the same small German town in the Black Forest is “a cool story,” says Wissmann. Seidenberg thinks it’s nice, as he emphasizes to rbb|24, “that another German and also a player from Villingen-Schwenningen is playing for the Bruins again.”
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Joint preparation with MacKinnon and Crosby
When he won Boston 4-0 in the seventh and decisive game of the Stanley Cup final series at the Vancouver Canucks on June 15, 2011, the then 14-year-old Wissmann sat in front of the television in Villingen-Schwenningen at night. Because it was the first German final duel in Stanley Cup history. Dennis Seidenberg against Christian Ehrhoff. “I can still remember it well, when I was a child – and now I’m here,” says Wissmann and smiles.
Seidenberg, who played 451 games for the Bruins shirt, advises his compatriot to “focus on your strengths, stay in your area and not try to do too much.” Constance, according to Seidenberg, is “the be-all and end-all.” On the local TV station NESN, which broadcasts the Bruins games, the commentators praised the fact that “Wissmann got used to the speed on the smaller ice surface pretty quickly in training”.
The Berliner attributes this to his preparatory camp. In the five weeks before joining the Bruins, Wissmann was in Halifax. James Sheppard, with whom he played with the polar bears from 2017 to 2020, has lived in the city on Canada’s Atlantic coast since the end of his career and had introduced his former teammate to a local training group.
Kai Wissmann became German champion in 2022 with the Eisbären Berlin.
Decision day is approaching
A group of NHL superstars. Among others, Nathan MacKinnon from champion Colorado Avalanche and Sydney Crosby were on the ice. “James said that if they still needed a defender, he would have someone who could come and keep up the level. Because of course they don’t want someone who ruins their exercises,” says Wissmann.
His advisor had also recommended that he get used to the smaller NHL ice by doing extra shifts in Halifax. So far, Wissmann only had experience on North American ice at the 2015 Junior World Championships in Canada. And so there was a lot of theory as well as practice. “I worked with a coach who was there specifically for defenders and who explained the differences between European and North American ice hockey, mainly via video,” says Wissmann. All in all, he sums up, the time in Halifax “definitely helped him.”
Whether it pays off, he will find out in the coming days. Then Bruins coach Jim Montgomery announced his provisional NHL roster. A trend as to where Wissmann is headed can perhaps be seen from the fact that he played in the 4-0 home win against the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday when most of the regular team was also on the ice. For Sunday’s test game with the New Jersey Devils, however, he was not nominated. But it was mainly young players who played there.
Broadcast: rbb24 Inforadio, October 4th, 2022, 9:15 a.m
