Harold Circle

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Flag of Canada and Germany.svg  Harold Circle Ice hockey player
Harold Circle
Date of birth January 19, 1959
place of birth Winnipeg , Manitoba , Canada
size 180 cm
Weight 89 kg
position defender
Shot hand Right
Career stations
until 1978 Calgary Wranglers
1978-1997 Mannheim ERC

Harold Kreis (born January 19, 1959 in Winnipeg , Manitoba ) is a former German - Canadian ice hockey player and current coach who has been the head coach of the Düsseldorfer EG in the German ice hockey league since April 2018 . Kreis is a member of the Hall of Fame Germany , played 180 games for the German national team and 888 first division games for the Mannheim ERC . As a coach in the DEL, Kreis has a win rate of 55.6 percent, and has won 220 of its 396 games so far (as of August 2019).

player

In 1978, the coach of the ERC in Mannheim , who had been promoted to the ice hockey Bundesliga , Heinz Weisenbach , was looking for players with German ancestry in Canada in order to - in a very controversial manner - undermine the foreigner restriction in the ice hockey Bundesliga. Harold Kreis signed up with eleven other "German Canadians", of which he and four others ( Roy Roedger , Manfred Wolf , Peter Ascherl and Dan Djakalovic ) finally stayed at MERC. Before his career in Germany he played with the Calgary Wranglers in the Canadian junior league Western Canada Hockey League and after moving to Germany a total of 19 seasons without interruption for the MERC in the Bundesliga and from 1994 for the Adler Mannheim in the German ice hockey league. He played 891 games and was the captain of his team for many years . In total he scored 598 points scorer . With Mannheim he was German champion in 1980 and 1997 .

Harold Kreis suffered a major setback on September 7, 1980 in a tough game against the VfL Bad Nauheim team . Without the action of an opponent, he hit his face against the gang and suffered severe facial injuries that had to be operated on. Only three months later could he appear again. Kreis was an unusually tough and physically fit player. He often received ice ages of up to 45 minutes per game, which is roughly double the ice age of today's player. At the same time, there are only 628 penalty minutes for Kreis during his entire career in Mannheim.

Banner with the blocked number 3 in the SAP arena

As a special recognition for his great sporting achievements, he received the last pass in the last game of the season against the Kassel Huskies , where the puck was deliberately passed to him by an opponent. Immediately after the last championship he ended his career, his shirt number 3 has not been awarded by the Adler Mannheim since then. His jersey was symbolically hung under the roof of the SAP Arena . In his honor, the Adler Mannheim jerseys with the number 888 were made and sold to his fans during Harold Kreis' farewell game in 1998. During his active time he also played 180 times for the German national team and was one of the top performers there for many years.

Trainer

After the end of his playing career, he initially worked for three years as an assistant coach with the Eagles, in the 2000/01 season in the same position with the Kölner Haien . He then coached EC Bad Nauheim in the 2nd Bundesliga . At the World Championship Division I (formerly B-WM) in Eindhoven in 2002, he acted as assistant coach of the hosting Dutch national team, which was coached by his old friend and Mannheim companion Manfred Wolf. After that, Kreis worked in the Swiss National League A as an assistant and youth coach at HC Davos .

In the summer of 2005 he took over as head coach the EHC Chur in the National League B . From March 10, 2006 he was head coach of HC Lugano in the National League A and immediately led him to the Swiss championship . He had taken over the team when they were behind in the playoff quarter-finals with 0-2 games against Ambrì. The fact that he managed the turnaround and made Lugano the champion was later described as the "most amazing comeback in Swiss playoff history".

In the following season he was under contract with the ZSC Lions in Zurich as head coach. He failed in the 2006/07 playoff at HC Davos 3: 4 (after a 3: 1 lead) and was Swiss champion in 2007/08. From the 2008/09 season he was the coach of DEG Metro Stars . In his first year in the DEL he was runner-up with the DEG in 2009. In 2010, Kreis moved to the Adler Mannheim . There he was in his second season with the Adler Mannheim runner-up in 2012. In 2010, Kreis also took over the position of co-trainer of the German national team. On December 31, 2013 Adler Mannheim and Harold Kreis parted amicably after a series of defeats. For the 2014/15 season he joined the post of head coach at EV train in the National League A in. In the 2016/17 season he led the EVZ into the NLA final series, but there his team lost to SC Bern with 2: 4 wins. In the previous two seasons, Zug had not made it past the playoff quarter-finals under Kreis' leadership. At the end of April 2017, his contract with the EVZ was extended by two years. Following the 2017/18 season, in which his team finished second in the points round and then eliminated in the playoff quarter-finals, the Kreis and EV Zug separated.

For the 2018/19 season he returned as head coach to Düsseldorfer EG , where he had already been head coach from 2008 to 2010. After DEG was only eleventh in the two seasons before and thus missed the pre-playoffs , Kreis led the club from sixth place in the table back into the playoffs, where he played in the quarter-finals in seven games of the best-of-seven series at the Augsburg Panthers failed. During the preparation for the 2019/20 season , the contract with Kreis was extended until 2022.

Greatest successes

As a player:

  • German champion 1980
  • Player of the year 1983
  • German champion 1997

As a trainer:

  • Swiss champion 2006
  • Swiss champion 2008

literature

  • Matthias Fries: Time to say good bye ... Mannheim 1998.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Ice Hockey News Special Edition 2019/20, page 43
  2. View: Lugano fires Huras, circle comes - view . ( blick.ch [accessed on December 31, 2016]).
  3. VADIAN.NET AG: Harold Kreis leaves Lugano . In: www.eishockey.ch . ( eishockey.ch [accessed on December 31, 2016]).
  4. www.rp-online.de ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rp-online.de
  5. Harold Kreis likes the job as assistant coach of the ice hockey team , Schwäbisches Tagblatt May 19, 2010
  6. Adler Mannheim part ways with Harold Kreis ( memento of the original from January 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Mannheimer Morgen 31.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.morgenweb.de
  7. ^ National League. Retrieved April 18, 2017 .
  8. EVZ extended with trainer duo Kreis / Immonen | EVZ. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on April 27, 2017 ; Retrieved April 26, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.evz.ch
  9. https://www.evz.ch/detail/news/artikel/angebote/2413/
  10. https://www.deg-eishockey.de/2018/04/deg-verpfliziert-harold-kreis-europaeischer-top-trainer-kom-zurueck/
  11. Michael Ryberg: Harold Kreis returns to DEG . ( nrz.de [accessed on November 3, 2018]).
  12. RP ONLINE: Until 2022: DEG extended ahead of schedule with head coach Harold Kreis. Retrieved September 12, 2019 .
  13. Ice Hockey News from March 12, 2019, page 9