Waltteri Merelä keeps SC Bern's hopes of a turnaround against Fribourg-Gottéron alive. And teammate Tristan Scherwey is demonstratively fit after the third overtime in the series.
23.03.2025, 03:25
23.03.2025, 08:14
SDA
In ice hockey, the playoffs are always the time when players don't want to show any weakness. After all, any potential weakness could become an advantage for the opposing team. Even if your nose is bloody, your thigh is sore or your shoulder is bruised from a hard impact on the ice - as soon as the first playoff puck is dropped, "pain" is removed from the vocabulary of every professional field hockey player.
Waltteri Merelä is standing in the "bear pit" late on Saturday evening - the area in the Bern Postfinance Arena between the ice rink and the dressing room where athletes and journalists cross paths. The Finnish top scorer's face is covered in blood, the stitch running through his nose the result of a scene in the 75th minute of the fifth act in the Zähringen derby between the SCB and Fribourg-Gottéron that set most of the 17031 fans in the arena on edge.
Merelä's sarcasm
Julien Sprunger knocks Merelä down with an elbow check, but instead of sending Fribourg's captain to the showers with a five-minute penalty, the referees decide to let the game continue without any sanctions. "It wasn't a penalty," said Merelä, who briefly disappeared into the dressing room after this scene to have the deep cut in his nose stitched up. "I've already lost a tooth in this series. That wasn't a penalty either."
Even if the Bernese fans are still loudly chanting these words into the vast expanse of the "Temple" - the sarcasm in the 26-year-old's vote is unmistakable. The Scandinavian could have become the tragic symbol of this SCB season on Saturday evening. As a scorer who has recorded almost a point per game in qualifying, but then, when it really matters, has to lick his wounds like a beaten dog in front of the catacombs.
But Merelä's story that evening is not a tragedy, but a heroic epic. Because the winger returns to the ice with his nose stitched up and, with 8.8 seconds left in the first overtime, decisively deflects Hardy Aktell's shot from the blue line to make it 3-2, extending this quarterfinal series by at least two days.
Scherwey's stamina
The majority of the players are probably happy to have been spared a fifth period this time. Of course, no one would say that just like that. Because fatigue is a similar thing to pain. Tired in the playoffs, after almost two weeks of games in a two-day rhythm? "Äuä", the Bernese would say. Fribourg's Tristan Scherwey puts it like this: "This is exactly what we've been training for. It's great to play so much. We would have been ready anyway."
The Bernese crowd favorite won't have to wait long before he can lace up his skates again. On Monday, the SCB will play in Fribourg once again to delay the end of the season. To do so, however, Jussi Tapola's team needs its first away win in Fribourg in this series.
It remains to be seen whether the Finnish coach will once again rely on Philip Wüthrich in goal for this endeavor. The 27-year-old, who made his second appearance of these playoffs in Game 5, kept his team in the game with some strong interventions, especially in overtime. The Bernese, who will be Ambri-Piotta's goalie from next season, would have been a second great figure on this evening alongside Merelä. But Wüthrich is like other goalies and doesn't talk in the playoffs. It's another peculiarity of playoff ice hockey that makes pain and fatigue disappear and goalies fall silent.
