Before the restart, it is worth taking a look at the many numbers, facts and figures about the clubs and the players: Füchse Berlin are the leaders in the table with 31:5 points prior to the re-start of the last 16 rounds, one point ahead of record champions THW Kiel (31:6) and one more ahead of Rhein-Neckar Löwen (29:7). But: since the defending champion SC Magdeburg still has two catch-up games against Bergischer HC and TSV Hannover-Burgdorf due to their participation in the successfully completed IHF Super Globe in October, the table is not quite straight, because SCM, like Füchse, only has five minus points. Below this quartet are SG Flensburg-Handewitt in fifth place, five points below Foxes on a European Cup position.

At the other end of the table, two clubs from North Rhine-Westphalia - GWD Minden (6:30 points) and newly promoted ASV Hamm-Westfalen (3:33) - are in the relegation zone, while HSG Wetzlar (9:27) is currently three points ahead of Minden.

If you look at the home and away tables, SG Flensburg-Handewitt is the best home team with 17:1 points (and the only one without any home defeat) ahead of SC Magdeburg (17:3) and the trio Füchse Berlin, Rhein-Neckar Löwen and THW Kiel (all 16:2). Füchse are the best away team with 15:3 points ahead of Kiel (14:4) and the lions (13:5). With 602 strikes, Löwen have the best attack ahead of Berlin (577) and Kiel (576), who are almost level.

The current top 5 in the league are also the top teams in terms of spectator numbers after 18 match days: With an average of 10,048 fans, THW Kiel are again at the top, followed by Füchse (7707), Magdeburg (6232) and Löwen (6184), all of them welcomed over 6000 visitors per home game. Flensburg are fifth with 5114 fans per game.

Two Danes are at the top of the list of top scorers: First is Casper Ulrich Mortensen of Handball Sport Verein Hamburg with 127 goals, 43 of them by penalties, ahead of the newly crowned world champion Hans Lindberg (118/61) from Füchse Berlin. And Lindberg is close to the all-time league record: With 2877 goals in the LIQUI MOLY HBL, the 42-year-old is only 28 goals behind the current record-scorer Kyung Shin Yoon (2905). The right winger passed the previous second-ranked Lars Christiansen (2875) on the last day of the Bundesliga match before the World Cup break.

Third ranked in the current HBL scorer list is the best young player of the 2023 World Cup, who also topped the statistics in terms of assists and scorer points (goals plus assists) at the World Championship: Juri Knorr from Rhein-Neckar Löwen with 117 goals, one less than Lindberg. The Swiss Samuel Zehnder (TBV Lemgo Lippe/107) is fourth ranked, followed by Lukas Blohme (VfL Gummersbach) and the currently injured Magdeburg Icelander Omar Ingi Magnusson with 102 goals each, ahead of another Danish world champion, Emil Jacobsen ( Flensburg/101).

The second best ranked German national player is Christoph Steinert (HC Erlangen) with 92 goals in tenth place in the ranking. In terms of field goals, Lukas Blohme is at the top with 97 goals, ahead of Jakob Lassen (Hamburg/90) and Lenny Rubin (Wetzlar/86). But Lindberg is the lone leader at seven meters, the Berliner scored 61 times from the line, followed by Magnusson (50) and Steinert (48).

Two goalkeepers from the Balkans are at the top of the statistics: Flensburg's Bosnian Benjamin Buric has the best rate with 36.58 percent saved shots, Melsungen's Montenegrin Nebojsa Simic leads the ranking with 184 saves and is in second place with 36.44 percent saved shots behind Buric. In terms of the number of saves, Minden's Malte Semisch (second with 180), Silvio Heinevetter (Stuttgart/178) and Johannes Bitter (Hamburg/175) are still ahead of world handball player and world champion Niklas Landin (Kiel/174), who has a quota of 36 .02 percent but is third behind Simic and Buric.

THW Kiel achieved the clearest victory in the 160 games played so far in the 2022/23 season with the 34:18 at GWD Minden, the game with the most goals was Hamburg’s 40:37 win against Rhein-Neckar Löwen with 77 goals. The players from Melsungen and Wetzlar only scored 40 goals in the Hessenderby, which the MT won 21:19.