The main round is over, and like every year the German Ice Hockey League (DEL) chose and awarded the outstanding players of the past six months. The player and striker of the year became Leonhard Pföderl from the Eisbären Berlin.
Kristers Gudlevskis from Bremerhaven was again voted the best goalkeeper, and the undisputed defender was a DEL-Newcomer: the Franko-Canadian Alex Breton from the class leader ERC Ingolstadt, whose coach Mark French was awarded the “coach of the year” award.
Quite big, quite strong, like to laugh
Leo Pföderl, whom no one who wants to find out about him, would ever speak to “Leonhard”, is an ice hockey player that children would paint in a picture book. He is quite large, quite strong, likes to laugh and even better score goals or prepare them. Leo Pföderl is a guy with which you want to set up a maypole because he could laugh with the whole work alone. And probably too.
Not a talkative type
But: Leo Pföderl is not the guy who likes to speak to strangers. If his polar bears from Berlin have won a game or maybe the German national team, the Leo will later be waved through by journalists in the interview zone. Which is a shame, because Pföderl also scores crucial goals quite often. In the DEL alone, there are already 255.
There are hardly ten players who managed this in the history of the highest German league. In contrast, hardly anyone can remember 255 words from Leo Pföderl.
Berlin power hockey
The awards that were now pressed into the big hands in the “Wartesaal am Dom” have undoubtedly their correctness. After absolute numbers, his club colleague Ty Ronning was better by ten goals, but if the DEL chooses its best, the home advantage can also play a role. In any case, the Pföderl has experienced its next astonishing season so far, scored 27 goals and prepared 45, and lifted the polar bears in a stable second place after the main round.
It is not a good news for the remaining teams that Pföderl is known for putting on a shovel in the playoffs. He has already decided championship rounds, often developed with an inner inevitability to the most valuable player and always seems to keep up with the pressure as if he himself was a maypole in the village square, which a surprising spring tower cannot harm even.
“I’m just nice to have pressure,” says Pföderl in an interview with the sports shot. And usually that would have been the answer. After a short break, the native of Bad Tölzer, to whom you hardly see his 31 years of life, goes on. “Then you notice in the playoffs: Now it’s about the sausage. And you are waiting for 52 games for that. Everyone watches the playoffs. I think something is really nice now.”
An answer that almost scratches the 255 words.
“I am there for that”
And once in the way, the Pföderl still gives something like his business secret: “I want to score a goal in the first game. And if I shoot three in the first game, I want to shoot one again in the next game. And if I don’t shoot one in the next game, I want to shoot one in the next”, here the ice hockey player will take a short break again, smile and say: “I’m there.”
“Leo is short and crisp”
It’s that simple with Leo Pföderl. Also for the trainers. For polar bear coach Serge Aubin and for national coach Harry Kreis, who held a short eulogy in the former waiting room of the Cologne main station. “Short and crisp, because the Leo is like that …”
However, Kreis had no idea that Leo Pföderl had drunk plenty of ratio water on this evening. In Berlin, by the way, he gets a beer from his Bavarian homeland from the ice master after the home games, preferably according to the wins.
One day back to Bavaria
And in general it is a thing in Pföderl’s life with your home and the miss of the Bavarian. “I have the best of two worlds in Berlin,” he says and another contract until 2029, you would like to add. “Berlin – it fits so far. But at some point it will definitely go back to the Bavarian homeland.”
Then he smiles again briefly and pensively. At the latest now it becomes clear what national coach Harry Kreis meant when he spoke of “Leo’s seriousness”, “who always rests on an inner smile”.