For the Vienna Capitals, important points are at stake in the fight for the pre-playoffs on Friday and Saturday. The Viennese start their Western Austria road trip today with an away game at the Pioneers Vorarlberg and at the same time the last quarter of the season (7.30 p.m.). Tomorrow, head coach Kevin Constantine’s team will be guests at the bottom of the table, HC TIWAG Innsbruck (5:30 p.m.). Both games will be broadcast as usual on sporteurope.tv.
Before the last quarter of the regular season, the Vienna Capitals are in tenth place in the table with 46 points. The race for the four pre-playoff places is hotly contested. There is only an eight point difference between the seventh-placed Hydro Fehérvár AV19 and the eleventh-placed EC iDM Heat Pumps VSV. The gap between the Caps and the Hungarians is six points with one game less. The Viennese team want to score important points in western Austria this weekend. In the previous week, the Capitals collected four of nine possible points. A 5:2 home win against VSV was followed by an overtime defeat against the Steinbach Black Wings Linz and a 0:4 at the Moser Medical Graz99ers. Caps top scorer Linden Vey’s six-game points streak ended against the Styrians. The Canadian has 36 points (9 goals + 27 assists) after 35 games. Carter Souch’s 15 goals are still the team’s best.
Personnel:
Striker Senna Peeters will make his debut for the Vienna Capitals in Feldkirch today. The 23-year-old, who moved from EC-KAC to Vienna in the summer, had to miss months due to an upper body injury sustained in a friendly. Sebastian Wraneschitz is also back in the Capitals squad after recovering from a lower body injury. The 23-year-old suffered his injury at the beginning of November. It is questionable whether Wraneschitz will be used during the road trip, as the Viennese recently missed a few days of training due to illness. Raphael Wolf is also available to the Caps after recovering from illness, and Scott Kosmachuk is also ready to play again. Jérémy Grégoire and Marco Richter will be missing due to injury. Dominic Hackl is not taking part in the road trip for personal reasons.
The opponents
The Pioneers Vorarlberg are second to last in tomorrow’s match, but Johannes Nygård’s team is particularly dangerous in the Vorarlberghalle. HC TIWAG Innsbruck, Olimpija Ljubljana, Hydro Fehérvár AV19 and VSV have experienced this firsthand in the past few weeks. The Vorarlbergers beat the aforementioned teams after 60 minutes, and series champions EC Red Bull Salzburg had to go into extra time in the Vorarlberghalle on December 26th. With four wins and one overtime defeat, the Pioneers are in third place in the home form table, which shows the last five home games. At the end of September, the Caps lost their first meeting this season 4-2. The Viennese’s last success in the Vorarlberghalle was around two and a half years ago. On September 26, 2023, the Caps won 6-4. Since then there have been four away defeats in Feldkirch in a row. The last duel so far between the Viennese and the Ländle-Cracks, which took place in the STEFFL Arena, went to the Capitals 4-3 after overtime at the end of October. Collin Adams is Vorarlberg’s top scorer and goalscorer with 29 points, 15 of them from goals. The Pioneers’ goalie team has the worst save percentage of all league teams with a combined catch rate of 87.95 percent. Vorarlberg’s power play, which has a success rate of just 9.82 percent, is also at the bottom of the win2day ICE Hockey League.
Before HC TIWAG Innsbruck meets the Vienna Capitals on Saturday, the Tyroleans will face the Moser Medical Graz99ers in front of their own audience today. Regardless, the Haie will go into the duel with the Caps as bottom of the table. Innsbruck currently has 22 points after 37 games. From the last 20 games, the Innsbruck team only got two wins, most recently the last eight games were lost. They have only won once since former league MVP Steven Owre was injured at the end of November. Nevertheless, the Canadian is still Innsbruck’s second-best scorer with 25 points. Sebastian Benker now leads the team’s internal scoring system with 34 goal contributions (10 goals + 24 assists). The best goalscorer is Benjamin Corbeil with 14 goals. The Capitals’ last defeat against the Sharks was over two years ago. Since then, the Viennese have won the last six meetings with the Tyroleans. In these games, the Caps scored 33 goals, while Innsbruck only scored eight times.
vienna-capitals.at Image: HCI/PAPA Productions
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