Waiting for the Wunderkinds: German Hockey Needs More Youth

Originally published in Rinkside in 2000

By Lucas Aykroyd

1964. It was the year four mop-topped lads from Liverpool hit America and revolutionized rock and roll. The year Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize. And in hockey terms, it was a long time ago.

So when the Cologne Sharks of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga won the 1999 Spengler Cup in Davos, Switzerland, becoming the first German club to top this European tourney in 35 years, you’d think it would be a tribute to how far German hockey has come.

What’s wrong with this picture? Simply put, German players had almost nothing to do with the victory. Cologne’s roster includes more than a dozen Canadians. North American ex-NHLers like Todd Hlushko (Calgary Flames), Mario Doyon (Quebec Nordiques), and last year’s elite league MVP, Sergio Momesso, led the offensive charge for Cologne in its 6-2 final win over Metallurg Magnitogorsk of Russia.

It’s a story that has become all too familiar since the DEL was established in 1994 and import quotas were abolished at the start of the 1997-98 season. Older foreign players dominate the rosters of the 15 elite league teams, which are only required to carry six Germans. Young German players never get the chance to compete against the best because they are consigned to lower divisions. Thus, NHL fans in North America can rarely name emerging German prospects. Not a single German has been chosen at the NHL Entry Draft since 1997.

“Sour Krauts Go From Bad to Wurst?” No, hold the bad puns, because it’s not all bad news. Two young German forwards are proving that European offensive flair is not the sole preserve of Sweden, Finland, Slovakia, Russia, and the Czech Republic. They are Jochen Hecht of the St. Louis Blues and Marco Sturm of the San Jose Sharks.

Hecht is, well, one hecht of a player. Often teamed with Pierre Turgeon and Scott Young, the rookie winger has ranked among St. Louis’s top scorers most of this season and will provide the club’s best challenge to New Jersey’s Scott Gomez for Calder Trophy honors. He benefited from a year of seasoning with the Worcester IceCats of the AHL in 1998-99, where he amassed 56 points (21-35-56) in 76 games. Barring injury, the 22-year-old graduate of the Mannheim Eagles should register close to 200 shots on goal this season.

Despite the dismal draft record of his countrymen, Hecht was confident he’d find a place on this side of the Atlantic back in 1995. “I was at the draft in Edmonton,” he recalls. “I talked to the Blues the day before and they said they would take me if I was available. I was expecting to be taken, so that’s why my agent brought me over to Canada to talk to the teams and get an impression.”

His confidence paid off as he was drafted 49th overall by the Blues. Earning over $590,000 this year, Hecht has no regrets about the path he followed. “I got used to the North American game playing in Worcester,” he says. “The ice surface is not so big as in Europe, so I had to adjust to that, and also to the body contact. Plus this summer, I worked out hard and got stronger, which is important.”

The 6-1, 196-pound native of Mannheim idolized Wayne Gretzky as a boy, but he only saw the Great One play occasionally. “We didn’t have a lot of coverage of the NHL back then,” he says. “And even now, it’s only one game per week on TV.”

Hecht does not believe the influx of former NHLers into the DEL harmed his development as a young player. “The league got better and better because the import players were allowed to come in,” he claims. “It was a good way to improve my game.” But then again, Hecht is more gifted than most budding German pucksters. If he keeps up his offensive production and the Blues follow suit, he won’t spend much time this spring on his favorite golf course, St. Leon Roth in Germany.

Similarly, San Jose’s Marco Sturm appears bound for a good playoff run. In his third year with the Sharks, he’d like to see the franchise get away from its history of underachievement. The tenacious 21-year-old left wing from Dingolfing has never accepted losing. For instance, at the 1996 world junior hockey championships in Boston, Sturm was third in tournament scoring with 10 points, but also picked up 51 penalty minutes in just six games. That’s because he got into a scuffle at the end of a game Germany was about to lose. His attitude earned kudos from the Sharks scouting staff, and Sturm was selected 21st overall in 1996, making him the highest-drafted German player ever at the tender age of 17 years and nine months.

Sturm credits some of his feistiness to Mike Bullard, a onetime NHL scoring star with the Pittsburgh Penguins and Calgary Flames. Bullard played with Sturm in the mid-1990’s on Landshut EV of the DEL. He says, “I told Marco, ‘If you get good in the NHL, they’re going to try to pick on you. If you let them pick on you, they’ll keep doing it.’ I told him he’d have to do some little dirty stuff like Wayne Gretzky does to keep them honest.”

Well, Sturm has gotten himself the room to showcase his skills against the world’s best. His NHL feats include recording the best single-game point outburst ever (5) on the Sharks on December 23, 1998 and finishing just one-tenth of a second behind Peter Bondra at the All-Star Superskills competition last year. Although it appears his production will tail off this year compared to his rookie season (30 points) and 1998-99 (38 points), Sturm is improving his play at both ends of the rink.

Linemates Mike Ricci and Murray Craven provide good tutelage in two-way play, as Sturm explains: “Ricci works hard and I work hard too. Murray’s a veteran and he knows all the players. It’s a good mix. When we work very hard and communicate in their end, we get our scoring chances.”

Good communication skills are key at the NHL level, and Sturm knows it. Before coming to North America, he spent nine months learning English from the wife of a Landshut assistant coach, and today his fluency is unquestioned. Like most young Germans, he is totally at ease with North American culture. His favorite musician is Garth Brooks and he enjoys TV shows and movies ranging from “Home Improvement” to “Seven.”

If Sturm has any regrets, it’s about the state of affairs back home in the DEL. He disagrees with Hecht about using imported players: “During my time back home, there were only three imports per team. I played the power play and penalty kill, and the year San Jose drafted me, they got to see me do all those things. But now, you can’t watch a young German player in the first division, because there are none.”

Sturm hopes he can inspire young German players to fulfill their NHL dreams. “I talk with kids sometimes in the summer, and tell them to not give up,” he says. “They just have to keep working hard and believe in themselves. Maybe it’ll work out for them.”

But to date, prospects like Erich Goldmann (Ottawa) and Sasha Goc (New Jersey) have not nailed down roster spots in the NHL. So if you’re looking for other current NHL players who have represented Germany internationally, and you assume Uwe Krupp’s back injury will force his retirement from the Detroit Red Wings, there’s only one choice. He is a 29-year-old star goaltender who was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and grew up in Union Bay, British Columbia, Canada. He enjoys German citizenship because his parents were globetrotting hoteliers of German parentage.

Netminder Olaf Kolzig has made a much bigger impression on the Washington Capitals than Stefan Ustorf, a center from Kaufbeuren who played 54 games for the Caps in 1995-96 and 1996-97. Kolzig led Washington to the 1998 Stanley Cup finals, tying an NHL playoff record with four shutouts. Nicknamed ‘Olie the Goalie,’ or, more fittingly, ‘Godzilla’ for his monstrous reach at 6-3 and 229 pounds, Kolzig spent parts of six seasons in the minors before breaking in. But he finally assumed the number one duties in 1997-98 after playing second fiddle to Jim Carey and Bill Ranford. While Team Germany didn’t get far in the 1998 Olympics, Kolzig won both games he started. This year, his creation of Olie’s All-Stars, a children’s charity, and continued steady play combine to make him a role model for up-and-coming goalies in Germany.

German hockey needs more examples like Hecht, Sturm and Kolzig to keep young players motivated. Memories of Uli Hiemer, the first player of German origin to play regularly in the NHL (New Jersey, 1984-87), and Uwe Krupp’s Stanley Cup-winning goal for Colorado in 1996 provide isolated inspiration. But digging deeper reveals that long before 1964, German hockey had a rich heritage.

The first hockey game in Germany was played on Lake Halensee in Berlin on February 4, 1897, supervised by the German National Skating Union. At first, players practised at a rink at the Berlin Zoo. But by 1909, the German capital had an indoor arena, and Germany was a member of the League Internationale de Hockey sur Glace, which would later become the International Ice Hockey Federation. With the Canadian-coached Berliner SC supplying the majority of players, Germany won a medal at each European championship before World War I. Banned from the IIHF from 1920 to 1926 as part of post-war sanctions, Germany came back with a vengeance starting in 1927 . Highlights of the next ten years included two gold medals, three silvers, and seven bronzes at the European championships, plus a silver at the 1930 world championships, a bronze at the 1932 Olympics, and a bronze at the 1934 world championships.

After World War II, though, German hockey never rose to such heights again. When the country was divided into West and East Germany, the talent pool suffered on both sides of the border. Unlike Czechoslovakia, the Communist regime of East Germany never built a strong hockey program. West Germany returned to the IIHF fold in 1951 and set up a series of domestic hockey associations, including the Oberliga, the Bundesliga, and the German Hockey Union. None of these associations fostered international success. The best West Germany could do was a bronze medal at the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics.

A cynic might argue the biggest post-war star in German hockey was Dr. Gunther Sabetzki, a Dusseldorfer whose reign as president of the IIHF from 1975 to 1994 was replete with controversy. But two forwards who forged their reputations in West Germany in the 1970’s and 1980’s deserve credit: Erich Kuhnhackl and Gerd Truntschka.

It’s a toss-up as to which of these virtuosos was better. Kuhnhackl accumulated 1,431 points in his German league career, which peaked in 1979-80 when he set records with 83 goals and 155 points. He also led the 1984 Olympics in scoring with 14 points, beating out better-known names like Slava Fetisov, Petri Skriko and Vladimir Ruzicka. Truntschka was dubbed “Germany’s Wayne Gretzky,” and he backed up that description with 1,420 career points. A Darryl Sittler comparison might have been equally appropriate. In a 1990 playoff game against Schwenningen, the shifty veteran notched 5 goals and 5 assists, reminiscent of Sittler’s 10-point explosion against the Boston Bruins on February 7, 1976.

Today, the Deutsche Eishockey Liga could use a youthful, homegrown star like Kuhnhackl or Truntschka to help fill its arenas. While hockey remains a popular sport, attendance around the DEL varies wildly. There is no standard arena size, as capacities range from 2,000 to 10,000. Financial problems have plagued teams like the Berlin Capitals. Dusseldorf EG, who had the biggest building in the league, filed for bankruptcy one month into the 1998-99 season. As with the NHL’s New York Rangers, the more prosperous DEL teams tend to attract the high-priced talent, which can lead to a competitive imbalance.

Your average Dietrich swigging his Löwenbräu in the stands will likely be disappointed if he thinks his Hannover Scorpions are about to spawn a Jaromir Jagr-style talent. But much like the United States, Germany has the economic potential to build a strong domestic youth hockey program. Neighboring countries like Slovakia and Switzerland have done it, and Germany too will start to deliver its rightful share of NHL prospects when the nation makes hockey a priority.

It may not happen overnight. But hey, the Beatles had to pay their dues in Germany before scoring on this side of the Atlantic, too.