After our recap of the Swiss team here, let’s dig in their opponent of the day.
Preview - Germany - QF
Moving on to the German now. And, it turns out we happened to track all their games for a our friend over at 5PLUSPIERDAUER, meaning we have a lot of data to look at…
Honestly it feels like the best draw possible for Switzerland. After a solid win against Italy, Germany had an offensive outburst against Norway but the game was much closer than it seems (1.4xG to 1.34). Then they completely stole Canada while being outplayed 4.94xG to 1.41… A good game against Kazakhstan was followed by a tight but deserved loss to Finland (2.28xG to 1.08) and another one to USA (3.15xG to 1.86) before escaping with a win against Latvia while defending for pretty much 40mn (1.95xG to 1.21 for Latvia). So after scoring 14 goals in the first two games, Germany only scored 8 in the next five.
Which feels not as impressive as finishing third of your group in front of Canada. In 7 games, Germany has matched its opponents with 16.09xG to 16.77. But, the Germans scored 22 goals and allowed only 14, overperforming offensively and defensively. At 5v5, they come behind with 10.3xG to 11.2 for their opponents but enjoyed a generous 16-9 goal differential.
Their transition game at 5v5 has been good with 66% of controlled exits and 56% of controlled entries. Their success on high-danger passes is lower than the Swiss however, with just 32% of completed passes.
The German Power Play has scored 4 goals for 4.97xG, being a bit traditional at looking for top of the circle shots and bombs from the blue line.
The Swiss power Play will be facing a very passive German Penalty kill, that sticks to its box formation in order to keep shots from the outside and block them. We saw the German penalty killers lying down one after the other against Canada or even Latvia to preserve the score. On the map above on the left, we can clearly see how few shots the German allowed inside their slot.
The roster
The German squad looked to be balanced upfront but it is maybe not as much as it seems. The top line of Rieder-Krammer-Kuhnackl has only produced 3 goals and has been a bit under 50% of expected goals at 5v5. Plachta-Eisenschmid joined by Kahun have been more productive offensively but also average on puck possession. They are moving a lot however and Eisenschmid is by far the most active shooter on that squad with 41 attempts, almost twice as much as the second man.
The real threat comes from the Reichel-Pfoderl-Noebels line, three players playing together all year long with the Berlin Eisbären. This season they were one of the best possession trio in DEL (thanks to the data from 5PLUSPIERDAUER) with 61.2 xGF% together.
During the tournament, they controlled the game with 70.2 xGF% while all three on the ice and are the top three German players for xG Contribution. Noebels leads the team in that department and also in shooting with 2.10xG himself, and only Seider has more shot assists. BUT Noebels didn’t finish the last game against Latvia and it would be a huge loss for Germany to not have him Thursday. With Pfoderl, they also lead the team for high-danger passes.
On the back end, Moritz Seider is obviously the subject of all talks. Defenceman of the year in SHL, he has impressed with his control of the game at his age.
In this tournament he is, by far, the German player moving the puck the most but his plays has not really translated into offensive creation. Only 15% of his zone exits and 42% of his zone entries have led to a shot. While shooting 27 times at the net, he has only recorded 1 scoring chance so far. He leads the team in shot assists however and you can feel his mission is to play safe and move the puck forward but not more.
The rest of the defensive squad is maybe Germany biggest weakness. Unfortunately, Brandt was injured after a great start. Moritz Müller has been in real trouble without Seider and shows a 44 xGF%. Holzer is also way under the 50% line but has been saved by his goalie many times. Jonas Muller has stepped up but you can see it’s a stretch for him to play top4 defence in the second week of the championship.
No, like during the round robin, Germany will mostly rely on Mathias Niederberger in net to be the hero. He has been extraordinary so far, saving 4 goals (8 allowed for 12 expected) with a 93.7 save%. His shot control is above average at 71% and he is not easily shaken by lateral plays. Actually, you can see below, almost all the goals he allowed have been on high to low plays, and not east-west.
To wrap this up, if Switzerland can contain the Reichel-Pfoderl-Noebels (with or without Noebels), they should easily take advantage of the depth match-ups to move on to the semis.
We will be live for this game on Twitter, with Thibaud’s account.
If you want to read more about Germany’s play in the tournament, here are the two articles in German written by Daniel Weinberger (with data tracked by Thibaud):
Game 2 vs. Norway
Game 3 & 4 vs. Canada and Kazakhstan
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Find more statistics tracked by Thibaud on his Tableau’s page here (for both Switzerland and Germany): https://public.tableau.com/profile/thibaud.chatel#!/vizhome/WorldChampionship2021/GameReport