Dresden Ice Lions celebrate historic home win - Christmas comes early!

Dresden Ice Lions celebrate historic home win - Christmas comes early!

A memorable evening for the Dresden Ice Lions: On December 22, 2025, they won their home game against ERC Ingolstadt 3-2. This was not only the first win of this DEL season in front of a home crowd, but also an emotional moment for the Eislöwen fans, who filled the sold-out Joynext Arena with 4,412 spectators. Ice Lions coach Gerry Fleming praised the success as a “Christmas present” for the fans who loudly supported the team. December 22nd, 2025 will go down in the history books as a turning point in the season, as Bild.de reports.

The course of the game offered the spectators an exciting show. Ingolstadt scored in the 2nd minute through Riley Sheen and put the Eislöwen under early pressure. But the deficit didn't last long: Austin Ortega converted two powerplay opportunities and gave his team a 2-1 lead in the 13th and 14th minutes. C.J. Suess added in the 19th minute and made the score 3-1. Ingolstadt managed to catch up through Sam Ruopp, but Janick Schwendener in the Eislöwen's goal made a decisive contribution to what was necessary to save the victory over time.

Setting the course in the table

This victory was particularly important for the Eislöwen, who now have to make up a nine-point gap to Frankfurt with one game less. The club from Hesse has only gotten one point in the last eight games and also seems to be in crisis, which represents an opportunity for the Eislöwen. Iserlohn, which won 6-4 against Frankfurt at the same time, swapped position in the table with the Hessians and increased the gap to the bottom of the table to ten points. Differentiated approaches to the game will be crucial in the coming duels, especially in the direct encounters between the Eislöwen and Iserlohn on December 30th in Frankfurt.

The coming challenge

The next opportunity for the Eislöwen to collect points will be on Tuesday in Straubing. The fanatical fans of the Ice Lions are also expecting another exciting duel. It will be interesting to see whether the team can take the positive energy from yesterday's game with them. It is also important that the Eislöwen learn from the last games and continue to improve, as WDR discusses in its analyses.

In the DEL-2 viewer statistics, despite a challenging start to this season, the Ice Lions have an average viewership, which speaks for the emotions of the league and shows that the support is there. The calculations show that the attendance figures this season were as follows: In the home game against Ingolstadt, the Eislöwen were able to attract 4,412 fans, while other clubs in the league recorded statistically lower attendance figures. It is these emotions that keep ice hockey alive in Dresden and give reason to hope that there is more to come, as the DEL-2 numbers show.