News, Season 2011/2012

Worldcup: Belp in the Semifinals

Belp wins the quaterfinal game against the runner up of the Czech championship and goes up to the semifinals.

In the round robin, Belp plaid better from game to game. The frist game vagainst the Slovak champions from nitra was lost 1:7, the scorpions had not yet adappted to the 5 on 5 play. This worked out much better aginst the host team of HBC Pilsen. Belp was absolutly equal and lost only 6:4 by an empty netter in the last seconds. The third game vs the German champions, the Heilbron Horntes, was clear 7:0 win. It has to be mentonned, that the German team arrived with only two lines here in Pilsen, as their best players are prepearing for the German ice Hockey season. In the quaterinals Belp faced the Usti nad Labem, the runner up of the Czech championship. A rather even game developped with a slight advantage for the scorpions. In the second half McFadden gave Belp the lead in powerplay. Usti faught back and equalised a couple of minutes later on their powerplay. No more scoring took place in the regular time, neither in the 5 minutes overtime. Usti had the frist shot, Hofmann came out a little bit early, went to the ground, levaing the net wied open, the Czech player just needed to play the ball into the net, and that was exactly what he did, but before te ball crossed the line, out of nowhere Hofmann's left leg guard closed the empty space in the last moment. Rybon then took the first shot for Belp, and scored! The last two Czech shooters as well as McFadden missed their shots, giving Belp a 2:1 win and a spot in the semifinals vs Nitra or Hradec Kralove.

Only 90 minutes later, the second Swiss team, the Oberwil Rebells made the semifinals too. Never before in ballhockey history two swiss teams made the semis. After the WCs from Pilsen 2009 and Bratislava 2011, the question, if Swiss ballhockey is still competitive on the highest international level. Well, a clear answer was given this morning by Belp and the Rebells.