DEL: All good things come in threes

For three players of the DEL friday was a special occasion. You don't score hattricks every day in professional hockey, but they managed to do it all on the same day. The quickest one in doing so was Sebastian Furchner. Within only 4:05 minutes at the end of the first period he gave his Grizzlies Wolfsburg a 3-0 lead to head into the first break. That was more than enough to carry on to an easy 6-2 win against Ingolstadt.

Furchner could add one assist to his weekend on sunday in Munich, where the Grizzlies rallied from a 1-3 deficit to pick up one point before Jerome Samson scored the only shootout goal to give Munich the win.

Munich itself was the victim of the second hattrick scorer on friday. On the road in Hamburg the Bavarians had to see a 3-0 first period lead slide away, courtesy of Nicolas Krämmer. He needed 21 minutes to score three goals and assist on a fourth one to turn around the game completely. Thomas Oppenheimer added the 5-4 later on to make it a perfect weekend for the Freezers, since they also won on sunday against Ausgburg with 5-3, a game in which Krämmer's teammate Jerome Flaake almost became a member of the hattrick club. He scored two quick goals in the first 10 minutes, but had to leave the scoring for his teammates afterwards.

The third player to achieve the triple threat was Köln's Philip Gogulla. However, he took his time and scored one goal in each period. On the first two occasions he equalized the leads of the Ice Tigers. After Alex Weiß scored with a blast from the blue line on the powerplay, he added the 4-2, before Dragan Umicevic set the score to a final 5-2.

The Sharks were planning to climb back up in the standings on sunday, but Ingolstadt did not agree with those plans. Johannes Salmonsson could equalize the first period goal by Thomas Greilinger after 30 minutes for Köln, but in the last period Ingolstadt pulled away. John Laliberte, Jared Ross and Petr Taticek finished off the Sharks with 4-1, which gave them three much needed points at the bottom of the table, especially since they lost their friday game.

Adler Mannheim also had a perfect weekend, which catapulted them into first position over the international break. On friday they defeated Düsseldorf 4-1 and yesterday they came out victorious in an always emotional derby with the Wild Wings from Schwenningen. Kai Hospelt's early goal for Mannheim could be undone by Schweninngen's Yan Stastny on the powerplay, but the Wild Wings did only have one more answer to the three goals of Brandon Yip, Jamie Tardif and Andrew Joudry.

Tweets by @eurohockey