Germany looks to upset Canada
Last Updated: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 | 8:07 AM ET
The Canadian Press
The German men's hockey team aims to play like the Swiss when it squares off against Team Canada. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) The key to taking down a world hockey giant at the Olympics? The Germans say, just play like the Swiss.
The winless Germans' plan of attack Tuesday will be to shore things up on defence, force Team Canada to make mistakes and score first.
Germany hopes to follow the lead of the smothering team from Switzerland, which clamped down last week on the heavily favoured Canadians and took them to a shootout before losing 3-2.
The Swiss shocked Canada at the 2006 Olympics with a 2-0 win.
But the Germans expect a highly motivated Canadian side after its 5-3 loss Sunday to the United States, which ended the preliminary round as the top-ranked squad in the 12-team tournament.
"They're pissed off, obviously, and they want to go for gold, so they're not going to mess around," German forward Marco Sturm said after practice Monday.
Depending on Greiss
Sturm, who plays for the NHL's Boston Bruins, said Germany will also need big-time goaltending Tuesday from netminder Thomas Greiss.
"Everything has to be perfect to beat these guys, but we've got to be realistic, we're the big underdogs," said Sturm.
The German roster features seven players who have played in the NHL this season: Sturm, Christian Ehrhoff of the Vancouver Canucks, Marcel Goc and Alexander Sulzer of the Nashville Predators, Jochen Hecht of the Buffalo Sabres, Dennis Seidenberg of the Florida Panthers and Greiss, a backup for the San Jose Sharks.
Most members of the team play for pro clubs in Germany, but a few will feel right at home playing in Canada.
Defenceman Chris Schmidt and forwards Travis Mulock and John Tripp were all born in Canada.
"It's nice to come back to North America, I like playing on the smaller surface, you don't have to skate so much," said Tripp, 32, a former Los Angeles King who now plays for the Hamburg Freezers.
"I'm hoping my family cheers for me, but you never know."
The Germans appeared relaxed Monday, saying all the pressure is squarely on Canadian shoulders.
The Canadian loss to the United States showed the Germans that even Canada's star players make errors, said German head coach Uwe Krupp.
"With that lineup, it's important for all players to see that they're human, that there are mistakes being made," said Krupp, a former NHL defenceman who buried the Stanley Cup-winning goal for the Colorado Avalanche in 1996.
"That's something that I think is important to acknowledge because the U.S. would not have won this game if there weren't mistakes being made on the Canadian side."
But beating Canada will be a tall order for Germany, which scored just three goals in the preliminary round — all of them in their last game, a 5-3 loss to Belarus, the former Soviet republic in eastern Europe.
In their first two matches, they fell 2-0 to Sweden and 5-0 to Finland.
Another challenge will be hitting the back of the Canadian net behind Roberto Luongo.
Ehrhoff, the Vancouver defenceman, hinted he might have a few tips for his countrymen on how to score on Luongo, his Canucks teammate.
"If he has some weaknesses, I'm going to share them with my [German] teammates," said Ehrhoff, who wouldn't elaborate on his Luongo-beating strategies with reporters.
Still, the Germans are keeping things in perspective against a hockey team that will settle for nothing less than gold.
"It would be a huge moment for German hockey" if the Germans managed to pull an upset Tuesday, Krupp said.
"We're a small country. We have 30,000 hockey players and that's counting basically every kid that's got a pair of skates," the coach said.
"The dimensions are startling. We're a huge underdog."
At the 2002 Games, Canada eked out a 3-2 win over Germany on its way to the gold medal. The last time the countries met at the Olympics was in 2006, when Canada pummelled the German side 5-1.
Tripp admitted some of the fresher-faced Germans might be in awe of the Canadian players when they step onto the ice.
"We have a lot of young kids who like [Sony] PlayStation, so I'm sure they play with these guys on their PlayStation games all the time," he said. "It's going to be pretty extreme."
