Second loss of the season for the Tornado

06 October 2009

Tornado played its first road game against arguably the best team in the league and suffered an undeservedly high loss in Strasbourg.

With no less than 6 core players missing for the trip (amongst which veteran player Beran, high scorer Welter, speedy Wambach and the two experienced blueliners Schons and Milano), Tornado had to stack up on juniors to be able to play 3 lines in Saturday night's game and the lack of experience combined with the long bus trip showed straight away.

Goalie Mangen had to fish the puck out of his net no less than 4 times in the first 20 minutes and the score after the first period was 0-4. At 3:53, Strasbourg’s Delhortal managed to find a loose puck in a scramble in front of the net to score the 0-1. 5 minutes later, at 9:03, Charmasson tallied the 0-2. Another rebound was converted for the 0-3 by Hohnadel at 13:46 and a shot from the blue line by Brau at 17:40 found the back of the net so that Tornado ended up with a large deficit at the end of the period.

In the second, Tornado resisted the strong Strasbourg offense much better and even managed to create its own scoring chances. At 25:26, Tornado’s Jarvenpaa managed to tally a nice goal under the crossbar after a tic-tac-toe play with Georges Scheier and Tornado seemed unwilling to let the game slip away by keeping up the intensity in a very physical game. The home team started to become nervous, despite the clear 1-4 advantage, as Tornado manage to counterbalance. Unfortunately, Strasbourg increased the pressure in the final two minutes of the period and upped the score to 1-6, first a powerplay goal by Fluck at 37:57 and then an unfortunate goal right at the end of the period by Delhortal at 39:32.

The same scenario was on display in the final period. Tornado was competing with Strasbourg and held the opponent off until a powerplay resulted in the 1-7 at 45:41 by team captain Bastian. Even though Schon managed to score his own powerplay goal unassisted shortly thereafter at 51:28. Outshooting the guests from Luxembourg 19-45, Strasbourg takes an easy win 8-2 from a weakened Luxembourg team that has to rally around new coach Karl Kuhnen and get back to basics: discipline, physical play and defensive solidity.

Tornado would also like to thank its loyal fans from the student community in Strasbourg who came to support their home team on foreign territory.