Defending champion KAC has reached the quarter-finals of the ICE Hockey League via the pre-play-off route. The Klagenfurt team beat Bozen 7-0 away on Friday and won the “Best of three” series 2-0. Graz, on the other hand, failed to Znojmo, the 99ers also lost the second match after extra time, this time 4:5 in front of their home crowd.
In the subsequent pick for the quarter-finals, Salzburg, the winner of the regular season, chose Znojmo, VSV chose Ljubljana, Fehervar chose Pustertal. This left only KAC for the Vienna Capitals. The matches in the “Best of seven” mode begin on Wednesday and last until March 22 at the latest. KAC initially played defensively in South Tyrol, but didn’t concede a goal and then scored the first shot on goal on the power play to make it 1-0 . Nick Petersen (14th), who was also successful in the first match, deflected a Ticar slap shot from the blue line into the goal. Matt Fraser, who was left alone by the Bolzano defense, made it 2-0 in the 27th minute. The South Tyroleans were still the team with significantly more shots, but failed several times at KAC goalie Sebastian Dahm and twice at the post. And the guests also acted much more effectively in the last third, Daniel Obersteiner (42nd) increased to 3:0 soon after the restart. The Bolzano team never recovered from that, a brace from Lukas Haudum (50th/51st) made the decision. As punishment, Thomas Koch and Clemens Unterweger conceded two more goals, allowing KAC to celebrate their biggest win in Bozen to date. The first match in Klagenfurt ended narrowly at 3:2 after extra time. The old KAC is back,” said Haudum, looking back on the series of defeats before the games against Bozen, which was also due to the absence of some key players who have meanwhile returned. In Graz, the 99ers fell behind 0:2 due to a serious double penalty. In the middle of the first period, Znojmo used a 5:3 advantage to score a double. In the middle section, however, Ken Ograjensek (29th) and Ben Blood (35th) equalized. Shortly after the beginning of the last third, Graz were able to celebrate their first lead in front of 1,600 fans, Adis Alagic (42nd) made it 3:2. With the fourth goal by Mike Zalewski (49th) there seemed to be a preliminary decision in favor of the one in the previous week Corona cluster affected Styrians fallen. Znojmo scored two more goals (54th/57th) but still made it 4:4 and thus went into overtime. This lasted particularly long at almost 28 minutes, and Sebastian Gorcik sealed the decision. Pre-play-off (best of three), 2nd game: HCB Südtirol – KAC 0:7 (0:1,0:1,0:5 )Final score in the series: 0:2Graz 99ers – Znojmo 4:5 aet (0:2,2:0,2:2 – 0:1)Final score in the series: 0:2So far in the quarterfinals (Best of 7): Salzburg , VSV, Fehervar, Vienna Capitals, Pustertal, Ljubljana, KAC
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