When you grow up in Germany, you don’t necessary get in touch with hockey or the NHL in your early years as long as you don’t live in Bavaria or the few traditional German hockey markets like Cologne or Berlin.
I was lucky my dad grew up in Berlin, so he knew the game well and was a fired up Fan of Dynamo Berlin back then, when Germany was divided into Eastern and Western Germany and my family and I lived in the eastern or Soviet sector.
Hockey in Eastern Germany was an uncommon and ridiculous story.
There was a pro league consisting of just two teams playing twenty times against each other to crown the champion.
These teams were Dynamo Berlin, now better known as the Eisbären Berlin and Dynamo Weißwasser, now named Lausitzer Füchse, currently playing in the DEL2.
The reason for this situation was, that the Federal Sports Council in Eastern Germany didn’t think that hockey was the sport to earn glory at big stages like the Olympic Games. So they cut it.
Thanks to the Chief of the National Security at least two clubs were financed and lead like Pro Hockey Clubs, because he was enthusiastic about the sport. You wouldn’t believe that this was enough to electrify a whole nation and make people, like my dad, diehard hockey fans.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Germany was reunited and we finally had a unified German pro elite league as of 1992. But German hockey clubs weren’t owned like companies at that time. They were still clubs and the league wasn’t a big business like the NHL. As a club, you could be relegated into the minor league system or get promoted into the elite league.
An inconceivable scenario for people used to the American sports entertainment circus.
That dramatically changed with the birth of the DEL in 1994, what was a big step for German hockey, because now the top-tier Pro Hockey League of the country was no longer under administration of the German Hockey Federation (DEB), who always had fiscal problems. So, as a result, the biggest German clubs had to become companies with limited liability under the guidance of the DEL. So the German League became the Copy Cat of the big role model in North America and still is.
But how did that move affect the minor league clubs and teams which did not become companies? After the DEL was founded, the ultimate goal for the teams not playing in the DEL, was to win the Minor League Championship. In minor league hockey you could still be relegated or promoted in a hierarchy system of five Leagues. Because it wasn’t possible to play in the DEL, some teams of the top league used the minor league teams as a farm system to develop their prospect players and to get them experience and the chance to play against veterans.
The minor league system worked like this until 2013. Then, the system evolved and a second league under the belt of the DEL was founded. The DEL2 now consists of about half of the teams are operated as companies with the goal to set up a second-tier league and the possibility of promotion and relegation between the top leagues. For the 2017/18 season, it will be possible again to get into the German Elite League out of the Minors.
There has been a great deal of evolution in German hockey over the span of my lifetime and it is not likely to stop any time soon. it’s more like an ongoing process. In 1989, the roster of Dynamo Berlin consisted entirely of players from Eastern Germany. Now the DEL has the highest number of American and Canadian players outside of North America. The owner of our hometown club is the Anschutz Entertainment Group, which also owns the Los Angeles Kings Franchise.
I’m not sure if it was Rob Zepp stopping a shot from Jamie Benn or the moment the announcer yelled the name of Claude Giroux, scoring an Eisbären game winner, when my dad said to me, “Son, I guess Germany is on the map.”
Finally…
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