The 2004–05 Deutsche Eishockey Liga season was the 11th season since the founding of the

Deutsche Eishockey Liga The Deutsche Eishockey Liga (for sponsorship reasons called Penny (supermarket), PENNY Deutsche Eishockey Liga) (; English: ''German Ice Hockey League'') or DEL, is a professional ice hockey league in Germany and the highest division in German i ...

(). The

Eisbären Berlin The Eisbären Berlin (; English: ''Berlin Polar Bears'') is a professional ice hockey team based in Berlin, Germany. The team competes in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL), the highest level of play in professional German ice hockey, and is also ...

() became first time German Champion, a feat they will repeat a number of times in the next seasons. The Kassel Huskies was allowed to stay in the league, despite losing the play-down, as Grizzly Adams Wolfsburg lost its DEL license. The season was significant, due to the

NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; , ''LNH'') is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Cana ...

lockout. 22 NHL players came to play the season in the DEL, with the Iserlohn Roosters making the first move by signing up Mike York. Several German national team players came as well --

Marco Sturm Marco Johann Sturm (born September 8, 1978) is a German professional ice hockey coach and former player who is the List of NHL head coaches, head coach for the Boston Bruins of the National Hockey League (NHL). As a Forward (ice hockey), forward, ...

Jochen Hecht Jochen Thomas Hecht (German: International Phonetic Alphabet, /hɛçt/) (born 21 June 1977) is a German ice hockey coach and a former professional ice hockey player. He has been serving as assistant coach for Adler Mannheim since March 2022. Hec ...

and

Olaf Kölzig Olaf Kölzig (born 6 April 1970) is a South African-born Germans, German professional ice hockey goaltender and current goaltender coach and player development coach for the Washington Capitals of the National Hockey League (NHL). With the exce ...

. Other significant signings included Stéphane Robidas and

Doug Weight Douglas Daniel Weight (born January 21, 1971) is an American professional ice hockey coach, executive, and former player. He is also the former head coach and assistant General manager (ice hockey), general manager for the New York Islanders. Dur ...

midseason signups for the previous season champion the

Frankfurt Lions The Frankfurt Lions were a German professional men's ice hockey club from Frankfurt, Germany that played in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga. The club ceased operations in 2010 due to financial difficulty. History * The hockey team was founded as a ...

. Erik Cole, who would have been playing with the

Carolina Hurricanes The Carolina Hurricanes (colloquially known as the Canes) are a professional ice hockey team based in Raleigh, North Carolina. The Hurricanes compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Metropolitan Division in the Eastern Con ...

, was named MVP of the playoffs with the

Regular season

The regular season was played from September 17, 2004 to March 13, 2005.Allemagne 2005
hockeyarchives.info (fr) GP = Games played; GF:GA = Goals for and against
Color code: = Direct Playoff qualification, = Playoff qualification round, = No playoff

Playdowns

The two last placed, Grizzly Adams Wolfsburg and Kassel Huskies played a "playdown" in a

Best-of-seven There are a number of formats used in various levels of competition in sports and games to determine an overall champion. Some of the most common are the ''single elimination'', the ''best-of-'' series, the ''total points series'' more commonly kn ...

series starting March 18, 2005. The Kassel Huskies were set to be relegated to the 2. Bundesliga, but due to the Grizzly Adams losing their DEL license, they were allowed to stay. The Grizzly Adams lost the license as their new Arena was not finished in time, and the old one did not conform to the DEL rules.

Playoffs

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:2004-05 Deutsche Eishockey Liga Season Deutsche Eishockey Liga seasons

DEL Del, or nabla, is an operator used in mathematics (particularly in vector calculus) as a vector differential operator, usually represented by the nabla symbol ∇. When applied to a function defined on a one-dimensional domain, it denotes ...