This Friday evening there is a first encounter between the Black Wings Linz and the EC-KAC in Upper Austria’s state capital, which dueled in the semi-finals in March and April over the full distance of seven games.
His sixth game in the still young season 2025/26 of the Win2day Ice Hockey League leads the EC-KAC to the northernmost league location: The red jackets will be guest on Friday, October 3, 2025, at Black Wings Linz. The first reunion with the Upper Austrians since the semi -final series held in the spring begins at 7.15 p.m. and is transferred to Sporteurope.tv (opens in a new window) in the live stream.
REPORTING
The encounter is not shown on TV, a livestream transmission, produced by the host club, but is offered again on Sporteurope.tv (opens in new window) (current offers for streaming tickets and passes here (opens in a new window)). Radio Carinthia (receiving online via Sound.orf.at (opens in a new window)) accompanies the encounter as usual in the Carinthian ice hockey magazine (from 8:04 p.m.).
The starting situation:
The EC-KAC last had to accept two home defeats against HCB South Tyrol (1: 5) and the Graz99ers (2: 3). Because the red jackets were also free of play last Sunday, they slipped to tenth place in the Win2day Ice Hockey League table. The Klagenfurters suffered too many avoidable hits in their five league games so far: The current number of goals (14) is significantly above the Expected Goals Against (11.7), the current cut on a loss score per game (2.80) exceeds every season value from the last nine seasons. At the same time, the precision on the offensive has also proven to be expandable: in just one of his five matches, more than 50 percent of the EC-KAC’s attempts at goal were also actual shots on goal.
The Black Wings Linz opened the 2025/26 season with a 5-2 home win against the Pioneers and have had four defeats in a row since then. This means that the Upper Austrians currently have the longest loss series in the league together with the bottom light in Innsbruck. So far, Linz has been playing significant problems with numerical inferiority: six of the ten penalty killings ended with a goal, on average opposing power play formations, only 2:08 minutes of overnight in order to get a goal against the Black Wings. The team of Head Coach Philipp Lukas, on the other hand, unchanged with its own numerical advantage: In the basic round, Schwarz-Petrol scored 22.7 percent of its goals in power play (league-leader maximum value), the brand is currently significantly higher for the current season.
The story:
Among all current opponents in Win2day Ice Hockey League are the Black Wings Linz the only club next to the EC Salzburg, against which the EC-KAC has a negative historical balance: Out of 162 matches, the red jackets won the minority of 77 (or 47.5 percent). In duels held on the lower Donaulände, the Carinthian success rate is even lower at 44.4 percent. This also has to do with the modest hit yield of the record champion in the now Linz AG Eisarena: The goals per appearance, which have achieved an average of 2.52 per appearance there, mean a minus of 14.7 percent compared to the value of all others since the founding of the league in 2000 by the EC-KAC.
In the closer past, however, Rot-Weiß against the Black Wings did quite positively: Eleven of the latest 16 confrontations ended with a Klagenfurt victory, including the last duel, the seventh and decisive semi-finals in April, which brought a 2-0 home success of the red jackets. Most productive player of the Carinthian in the total of eleven season encounters with the Upper Austrians 2024/25 was Mathias from with twelve scorer points. However, Linz must also be warned of Jan Muršak, who scored in each of his seven career games in the KAC jersey against the Black Wings, at least twice in four.
Personnel:
Kirk Furey and David Fischer have unchanged for striker Fabian Hochegger, who has made progress on his rehabilitation path in the current week and has again completed the first relaxed units on the ice. Defender Jordan Murray is also planned for the first ice contact in the coming days, but an operation against Linz on Friday is excluded. All other squad players were there in the final training session on Thursday and are available for the away game in Upper Austria.
Pre-game comment:
David Maier:
“The first five league games leave mixed feelings, we have certainly not yet shown our best performances: partly we play well, sometimes okay, but sometimes really bad. Fortunately, we are still at the beginning of the season, but it is clear that there are still a lot of improvement options.
“The Black Wings are on the whole and the team that we were opposite in the playoffs in the spring. They have a few injuries now, but not much will change from their playground. Linz acts structured and mostly on the defensive, they have two lines that are extremely dangerous and also showed in the semi -finals last year that we can play goals so that we have to play very well tomorrow so that we have to play very well so that we take along.”
“On our side I see a few points that have to be changed. We have spoken a lot about our duel rate throughout the week, we are not yet where we want to be. The goal is to be over the 50 percent mark in every game, that has not yet been achieved. We are also not yet at our normal level in both special teams and outnumbered. Opportunities recycling: I think we create enough chances, but we also have to transform them into hits. ”
“I have often played with Jesper Jensen Aabo, it does not need to get used to it. Against Graz we have it, you can see from a stupid goal, pretty well done. We harmonize well and want to go on the team that is security and support. If we are on the ice, there should be no goal, which we then produce forward is almost irrelevant.”
kac.at Image: BwL / Eisenbauer
