Playoff, Season 2010/2011

Belps hopes drowned in the rain

The Oberwil Rebells win their sixth consecutive championship after a 4 to 3 win in Belp.

400 excited spectators expected a big game last Saturday afternoon in Belp. The situation was clear. Belp needed a win to force Oberwil into a third game.

Both teams started highly concentrated and neutralised each other. A penalty against Belps Daniel Fahrni gave the Rebells the first power play opportunity of the day. Belps penalty killing worked well, unfortunately only for 1 minute and 50 seconds, then Andrew Hildreth deflected a shot from Tibor Kapánek from the blue line into the net. Belp wasn't shocked at all by this blow and continued to make its game. In the 16th minute Alessio Faina could equalize the game assisted by Tyler McFadden and Michael Zürcher. It came even better, two minutes before the end of the period, Nicola Fuchs gave the scorpions a 2 to 1 lead on a pass from Sandro Wittwer.

During the first break, a almost two month period of dry weather ended abruptly. The floodgates of heaven opened. It looked like the missing rain wanted to fall on earth within a few hours. The quality of the game suffered a lot. Due to the water on the rink, passing became very difficult. A combination game was hardly possible. Nevertheless both teams tried to make the best out of this situation. When Belp had the chance to play in power play, the Rebells had – thanks to the water – not any difficulties to kill it. Almost, then in the last second of the powerplay the ball came somehow from Nicola Fuchs to Marc Müller, who was in front of the Rebells net, and the captain of Belps junior team had no problems beating Pascal Melliger in the net of the team from Zug. Now the guests were struggling, everybody felt, one goal more from the scorpions and the Rebells would fall. And Belp had its chances to score, but the orange ball did not want to go inside the net. Then, with less then one minute left in the period, faith struck in the person of Matthias Häni, who suddenly turned up in front of Michel Mäder and deflected a pass from Andrew Hildreth into the net.

Nothing was lost though, but at the beginning of the third period, it looked like the fear of loosing had come back into the heads of some players from Belp. They acted now somewhat hesitant, did not fight with the last consequence, something that you should never do against the Rebells. In the 42nd minute Marc Sonderegger made profit out of this and equalized the game. The game went back and forth. In the 47th minute, due to the water on the rink, a ball unexpectedly stopped on one of the face-off points in front of Belps net. This led to a fatal misunderstanding within Belps defence. Marc Sonderegger could make profit out of this situation and brought Oberwil 4 to 3 ahead. Belp worked hard to equalize, but Oberwils clever defence didn't allow any further scoring. Oberwil won the sixth Swiss championship in a row.

Belp has lost – once again – a decisive game against the Rebells. But this time it was close. The difference made Tibor Kapánek –who calmed his team down in the second period - and Matthias Häni – who scored the important 2 to 3 -, the two most experienced players in Switzerland. Nevertheless, Belp was close. And as Kapànek will finish its career after the WC in Bratislava the chances for next year don't look to bad. A lot of work has to be done, for sure. But at some point in time the Rebells will be beaten. Why not next year? Why not by Belp?