Steel Wings had to admit defeat in extra time in Celje

As in Linz, the Slovenians took advantage of a defensive mistake by the young Linz team early (8th) in the game and took the 1-0 lead through Mukus Mintautiskis. Before and especially afterwards, the Linz team showed a stormy performance with good forechecking and numerous shots on goal, but they couldn’t find their way past KAC loanee Jakob Brandner in the Slovenian goal.

The picture in the second section did not change. The Steel Wings started the middle third ambitiously, but in the 31st minute they let an opposing striker escape, but he was denied by the Linz goalkeeper on the counterattack against Benedikt Oschgan. Inspired by this, Linz struck five minutes later: Maximilian Theirich (36th) scored to equalize 1-1. And before the stadium announcer had finished speaking “Steel Wings,” the disc was already fidgeting in the goal again. William Persson scored just nine seconds (37th) after equalizing to give Linz the lead. What a comeback. But again just 28 seconds later, Slovenian Mark Cepon had a brilliant idea and scored to equalize 2-2. Three hits in less than a minute.

Linzer equalize in the power play

It took until the final third for something to move on the scoreboard again: Jure Sotlar was the beneficiary of a gift from Linz and scored to make it 3-2 for the hosts. But the Linz power play unit was also allowed to take up duty again when Jure Sotlar had to go into the cooler (50th). And after 40 seconds it was William Persson again who scored to make it 3-3 (51./pp). With this score we went into overtime, before which Alexander Moser – one second before the siren – picked up a penalty for a stick stroke. As a result, the Linz team had to compete outnumbered. And after a minute and a half, Mitautiskis broke the spell again and scored for the hosts to win 4-3.

“I think it was a pretty good game for us, we created a lot of good chances to score, but then we didn’t score enough goals. We also made mistakes again that we had previously discussed. That’s something we definitely need to correct, but it wasn’t the reason why we didn’t get more points. If we want to win games like these away from home, we simply have to score more goals. But generally speaking, it was a good game and I’m happy with the performance,” said coach Matej Hocevar.