Theresa Knotson looks forward to her team’s next two matches. “Games are incredibly important to our team and they also happen against players I have had a lot of experience with,” she says. “My adrenaline levels will rise very fast.” There is a lot going on for Knutson and Isabine Juniors. Berlin women want to go to the finals tournament of the Bundesliga.

The Polar Bear is currently ranked fourth in the German Women’s Ice Hockey League (DFEL) table, tied with fifth-placed Mad Dogs Mannheim. Ironically, Mannheim’s men, for whom the 24-year-old has recorded 114 scoreless points in 55 matches from 2018 to 2020, will host the Berlin Women on Saturday (3:30 pm) and Sunday (1:30 pm).

There will be no play offs this season. The champions will be determined in the semifinals and finals on 13 March and the 14th Fusen.

Knutson joined only head coach Daniel Bartel’s team in early February. After two years at the Bundesliga in Mannheim, she signed a contract with the National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL) in summer 2020 and trained in New Jersey for the October season with her team, the Metropolitan Riveters.

“At some point the league decided to compress our season into a bubble in Lake Placid within two weeks,” American says from the state of Wisconsin. “Due to some Kovid-19 diseases, our team had to leave first. The entire tournament was later interrupted as there were more cases. There was no award ceremony for Isobel Cup champion 2020/21 in the historic Olympic ice arena of the 1980 Winter Games.

Knotson already played very successfully in Mannheim – now he meets his old colleagues

And yet the NWHL was several steps ahead of the other North American women’s ice hockey leagues. None of the other alliances, some of which exist only on paper to date, have recently played a solo game. This is also due to the fact that most of the national players in Canada and the United States are currently on strike. They want to be paid more fairly and they want health insurance that deserves the name.

Knutson is currently back in Germany, scoring his first two goals for the Berliners in the last weekend of his fourth game in Cologne and now has five scoreless points from four games on his account. “It is not so easy to score goals. We played against teams that were very defensive, ”she says. “Also, it is not important who gets the goal, the puck has to go to the player who is free.”

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And of course Knotson needed some time to get used to it. “In North America, you have to keep playing after you get the puck, otherwise you lose it,” says the striker. ‘”” Here you may have a second or two, but then the feed must be correct. “

In the last two seasons, the Americans missed the final of the Bundesliga twice. She is all the more convinced that she can achieve a lot with the polar bear. With finesse he convinces the defenders as they move through time and the strikers who play good passes. “We have a team that works very hard. We fight till the last second. That is why we will win in Manimahesh. ‘

Should it not work with two wins in the Palatinate, there is still an emergency version. They will have to score points at Memming on the previous match day (6 and 7 March). However, it is one of three full title favorites next to Plenig and Ingolstadt. So it is safe to win at Mannheim, Theresa knows Knutson. “We will stand safely behind and push Mannheim out. It is important to seize opportunities. “To do this, he has to bring his adrenaline levels under control.