The ice hockey business in the best league in the world is an enormous cut-throat competition.

"There's always someone who wants your job," says Carter Rowney.

The Canadian was himself one of those countless players who wait year after year for their chance in the North American NHL.

And he was someone who suddenly lost his job in the summer after five and a half seasons: no new contract, but plenty of opportunities.

The NHL opens doors.

Especially as a highly decorated Stanley Cup winner.

David Lindenfeld

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The fact that Rowney went to the German Ice Hockey League (DEL) from Frankfurt in the summer was not a “spontaneous decision”, he says.

“I had a few conversations with Franz over several weeks.

I liked the enthusiasm he exuded.” After the phone calls to sporting director Franz-David Fritzmeier, Rowney got a second opinion from his compatriot and Löwen captain Reid McNeill.

In the end there was a decision: "What the club has achieved and where it wants to go, the city - it just felt like the right decision."

"It was hard not being drafted"

The lions had their dream player, who has been playing the way many people have wished for.

Rowney is the one directing the front row game.

He spends the most time on the ice of any forward in the league, averaging 21:16 minutes per game.

In the scorer list he is seventh after 37 games with 38 points (13 goals and 25 assists) - not too far behind his strike partner Dominik Bokk, who leads the ranking with 44 points.

The 33-year-old impresses with exemplary commitment, good defensive work and a formidable face-off game.

Nobody in the DEL has won more games than him.

Rowney is one who hardly has any weaknesses.

It seems all the more astonishing today that the many scouts did not initially prompt him to bring him into the NHL.

"It was tough not getting drafted, but I never gave up and worked my way up," he says. "Not everyone has played in all three leagues." Rowney had to start down the road from ECHL to AHL - and then patiently wait for his chance.

It came when he was 27 but still believed he could do it.

When several players dropped out with the Pittsburgh Penguins, one person in particular was convincing on the farm team: Rowney.

He gets a call from the coach, he's in big business, and a story begins that he now describes as "surreal" and "crazy."

In January 2017, he made his first of 272 games in the NHL.

In May he will be a father.

And in June he wins the Stanley Cup with Pittsburgh as a player who has less playing time in the back rows than the big stars around Sydney Crosby, but does his job conscientiously in these sequences.

The team impresses him

Each player is allowed to have the prestigious trophy for one day.

Rowney takes the real trophy (and a security guard) to the 2,600-strong town of Sexsmith, where he grew up on a farm and where he and his brothers and cousins ​​once snowmobiled to the many frozen ponds and lakes to play ice hockey .

The champion back home.

What has changed since winning the Stanley Cup?

"Nothing," says Rowney.

And laughs briefly.

Probably because he already knows that since then he has been perceived differently, but still wants to be the same guy as before.

“You absorb this moment.

But what you've achieved doesn't count for the next game.

You have to prove yourself anew every day.”

Rowney is "happy" with the season so far.

Of course there is room for improvement - in the power play, for example.

But the way the team performs impresses him: “We are always competitive, never give up and have come back many times.

We can be proud of that,” says Rowney, who plays with the lions in Straubing this Friday (7:30 p.m., live on MagentaSport).

He does not want to reveal what plans he has beyond the summer.

"Right now, I'm just looking from day to day.

I'm happy to be here in Frankfurt.

My family loves it,” says Rowney.

And it doesn't sound like someone looking for a new job.