How good is the NHL?

After the great victory of the EVZug in the show act vs the New York Rangers, the debate on the strength of our league, respectively the strength of the NHL, fueled again. Some published opinions expressed in the Swiss media are in my view, though well-written, reader-friendly and entertaining, but not even close to the truth. When I read about outclassing an NHL team, when I read that the NHL players were much too slow and when I read that our players are stickhandling- and skating-wise  better than the NHLers, when I read that 66% of NHL-players wouldn’t be good enough for supporting the teams in our league... common... all this asks for a down to earth response. This opinion-forming articles are very dangerous for the development of the Swiss ice hockey, they are the gravediggers in terms of our goal to move closer to the top of the world.

First of all:

The NHL is the best league in the world, the best players in the world play in the NHL, the arenas, franchise organizations, marketing, the referees, statistics..., just to name a few things: All this is pure and simple „state of the art“ and much more professional than in our league. Every player and every official who was ever in an NHL team under contract will confirm this.

Why is this so?

Let's stay with the players: Each year the world's most watched 18-year-old talents are getting scouted by around 500 scouts at every conceivable opportunity. At the end of the year there is a draft and the rights of the supposed to be best 210 players in this age-group will go to an NHL team. The same goes for older players who are still not drafted, they are also regularly observed and, if they are good enough, they will get a contract-offer. Of course there are always exceptions: Good, undrafted talents sometimes later show that the decision-makers were wrong on draft-day. Good older players with some sort of NHL level and still no NHL-contract, also this happens. But these are exceptions. The network of scouts is very fine mesh. All drafted players under contract do get a repeated fair chance to show that they deserve to be on the NHL-team. No NHL team allows to prefer a worse player compared to a better player; related conspiracy theories and adventurous reasons why this player is on the team and not the other one belong to the realm of fairy tales. The better player plays. Because the "bad" and "better" can only be judged subjectively, one will also always find at this level some errors, but these errors are again the exception, not the rule. The NHL pays the best salaries, offering the most professional environments and has the highest prestige. For this reason there are just few players who turn down appropriate contract-offers (except about a dozen players in the KHL) plus single cases. All this means that one can say with complete justification and must admit that in the NHL we have the best players in the world. However there still are some obscure observers of the sports scene with quite romantic and glorified views in terms of the better and worse.

Let’s explain it this way:

A hockey game is a fair competition. For both teams exactly the same rules apply, ie both have exactly the same "weapons" (skates, stick and equipment) and also in our Swiss league the players are professionals. Our professionals train just as much as an NHL pro. That’s why: The performance differences are – actually they must be – for outsiders and some fans not so much noticeable. Also, there are players in our league where I think they could compete in this or that respect in the NHL. There are not many players on this planet faster than Peter Guggisberg or Fabian Schnyder, but ... now I build the bridge to my argument ... in our top-league there are just very few players faster than the second-league-player Philip Wüst ... and yet he plays in the NLB and not in the NLA and for some reason Guggisberg and Schnyder play in the NLA and not in the NHL...

The show-act win of Zug vs the Rangers is not so surprising if you take into consideration that in the Swiss pre-season a lot of 2nd-league teams did beat 1st-league teams. Surprisingly – but wisely - nobody did question by then that our 2nd-league is as good or better than our 1st-league... The reader can believe me that I watch at all levels - year in year out - NHL, AHL, NLA, international games, youth games, 2nd-league games and even 3rd-league games) I ususally do notice that the level is respectable, that the differences are not so great between the leagues. Also in the 2nd and 3rd-league there are players who can skate and who can shoot and pass the puck more or less. When you watch closer there are of course reasons why someone plays in the third league and not in the first, of course there are reasons why someone is playing in the  Swiss NLA and not in the NHL. The differences are fine (eg, positional play, body tension, shot- and passing- quality, physics, puckcontrol, balance,) but for experts these differencies are clearly recognizable. The differences are not 0 to 10, but rather like NLA 7 out of 10 and NHL 8-9 out of 10 and – once again - this is logical, if the differences would be bigger we would have to ask harsh questions to our hockey-development-staff about what they do in practice.

Conclusion:

There were and still are very romantic ideas about the NHL, probably because of the exorbitant salaries of star players. Many feel that the NHL players have to be worlds better and lightyears faster than our players, of course they are not. The NHL players are not gods, and the Swiss NLA players are not idiots, but the NHL players are noticeably better. They shoot  better, they pass the puck better, they have better puck-control,  and they are also mentally and physically stronger. Nevertheless, a NLA team defeated an NHL team in a show-act. But don’t forget: In a significant best of 7 series even the weakest NHL-team would beat all Swiss teams more or less easily, guaranteed! We have to remember that the level difference is small between the worst and best NHL teams, caused by the salary-cap system on the one hand and the draft on the other. Well over 90% of current NHL players - not included are former, energy- and effortless NHL-cracks – would make our NLA-teams clearly better except if teams for example are looking for a scorer and take a "goon"  or vice versa ... what sometimes happens ...

If we don’t admit these differences this would be very dangerous for our plans to further improve our hockey. The difference is not black to white but maybe dark grey to light grey, and this has it’s logic. The same training effort, the same rules and the same equipment. It's not like that NHL players go to war with stealth bombers and NLA players just with knifes, all are equipped the same and all are professionals.

Advice:

It hurts our hockey when we glorify our level and take a bath in silly arrogance. There is absolutely no need for that because we are good enough and should be self-confident enough to judge our level in a objective way. We don’t have to hide from nobody also not from the truth.

I have a small scouting-mandate for the NHL. I’m very proud of this and I enjoy the NHL-scouting so much! However, this issue must be part of the transparency in this discussion.

Stallikon, 19 October 2011 / Thomas Roost How good is the NHL.docx

Hockeysense - a god-given talent or result of hard work?

In my long experience in talent-scouting in business and hockey I did learn that basic talent is vastly overrated. Most of the skills are built through hard work, hard work is one of the main secrets in terms of becoming world-class in whatever you do. In addition it’s passion and the love to the game of hockey or the love to the subject you want to become really outstanding.

It’s a different approach if you discuss one of the most important aspects of a world class hockey-player: Hockey sense. In my uncountable discussions with experts, coaches, managers, players and scouts most of them believe that hockey-sense is a god-given-talent and just very limited teachable. I did agree with this for long years, but not anymore.

Let’s start with my description of hockey sense: Hockeysense means to take the right decisions in different situations, with the puck and without the puck. In more specifics hockeysense means to think the game in advance, to act and react more fast than others, to create offensive options via passing, deking , efficient moves and hiding intentions, knowing when to slow down and when to speed up the game, seeing the open ice, smelling where the puck will be, smelling where lost pucks will be, where rebounds will end, reading what the opponents will do, reading what your teammates will do, reading how the game will develop. There are probably even more aspects of hockeysense.

After watching close to 3000 games I did notice that my theoretical hockey-sense, my hockey-sense from the outside,  did improve dramatically compared to my early goings. In today’s hockey-world I can see from the outside pretty much in advance what a player should do on the ice, I can smell a dangerous situation well in advance and I started to be much too critical with players because I expect that they should have seen, should have smelled, this or that. Of course I do know that watching developing plays from under the roof is much more easy than doing the same as a player on the ice, while being exhausted, while taking hits and while not having the relaxed eagles eye of a scout sitting under the roof. On the other hand it tells me that my improvement in theoretical hockey-sense is an indication that players also can learn, can improve hockey-sense, at least to a certain extent. While playing 15000 hours of piano makes better piano-players compared to just playing 5000 hours I start to believe that watching and/or playing as much hockey as possible also makes a better hockey player in terms of hockey-sense.  What does this teach to young players: Not only playing as many games or practicing in as many game-situations as possible but also watching hockey-games will improve your sense for the game. If you are passionate enough to watch as many games as possible, passion and love to analyze games, game-situations and players – this will tremendously improve your own game also. Actually it means you have to smell, to live, to breath hockey every single minute. Study the game, study players and you will develop your own hockeysense in big leaps. I even will go as far as thinking about practicing your eyes. There are new methods of practicing the eyes, so you will be more focused to the important things in the game, you will have a wider perspective to the game and you will have a more focused, more calm and relaxed eye. This might be a detail but maybe a detail to think about because it will be details who decide about success or not success at the very top. I think that practicing the eyes could be especially effective for goalies but not only for goalies.

Another thing: I do know very well that the advice of smelling, eating, breathing, watching hockey for 24 hours per day doesn’t produce well balanced educated people. This is for sure and please don’t ask me whether I want to have dinner and discuss about god and the world with such a person. But here we are not discussing about well balanced 360° educated personalities. We are discussing how to develop hockeysense and I think there are certain indications that I might be right with my thesis. What do you think?

Zurich, 16^th September 20011 / Thomas Roost

What do Sidney Crosby, Bill Gates and Anna Netrebko have in common?

It was always my target – and still is – to find out similarities in personal profiles of world-class performers. After evaluating thousands of interviews, personal profiles and CVs I did come to the conclusion that the real truth is very unspectacular: There are so many different ways to become world-class, so many different profiles and one of the main points is, that becoming world-class depends very much on the circumstances. Bill Gates wouldn’t be the Bill Gates we do know today if he would have been born 10 years earlier or later. He was „lucky“ to become an adult coupled with his passion for computing and coupled with his brain in the exact time when a computer-revolution was on the horizon. I don’t know about Sidney Crosby and Anna Netrebko for sure but there are strong indications that the same would be true for the world-famous hockey-player and the world-famous opera-singer.  A lot of world-famous people did tell their strategies and wisdoms in books and millions of followers tried to act, decide and live exactly the way they did... only to find out that years later they stayed as unsuccessful as ever. The „wisdoms“ of the world-famous people are just wisdoms in a certain time and in a certain context. The same strategies in another time and/or other contexts don’t work.

So on the one hand I was very excited with my findings in my analytics because I really dare to say that my thesis is the truth. On the other hand I’m also a bit disappointed because I did hope deep inside that I can offer you a real spectacular answer to this often asked question.

I don’t want you to leave you alone with telling „there are no secrets and no similarities in personal profiles of world-class performers“ because in this absolute words it’s also not true. I did find – actually not only me did find out about this... – some „shy“ similarities in personal-profiles:

Here we go:

World-class performers are usually very passionate in what they do, they have a great passion about what they do!

World-class performers usually work harder than competitors.

World-class performers must have the benefit of world-class teachers, educators. Wolfang Amadeus Mozart wouldn’t have become the world famous composer and musician without his father Leopold, who was a world-class teacher in his time.

World-class performers – and this I did especially find in profiles of world-class business-men, entrepreneurs – very often overrate themselves. If they fail – and nearly all world-class entrepreneurs did fail at least once in their career – they never think they failed because they are not clever, not good enough – even it might be even true... – that’s why they try again and again... until they succeeded...

World-class performers have have most often an above average egoism. They are very often not typical team-players, they accept their egoism and act according to it.

Basic talent is overrated, this is not only true in my eyes, it’s also a highly recommended book „Talent is overrated“ by Geoff Colvin / Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

Overconfidence

What do have soccer-coaches José Mourinho, Real Madrid, Felix Magath, VfL Wolfsburg, Christoph Daum, Eintracht Frankfurt, Lybian president Muammar al Gaddafi and to a lesser extent – but already noticeable in a recent interview -, Swiss hockey coach Arno Del Curto, HC Davos, have in common? It’s their so called overconfidence.

A good, healthy confidence is one of the most important parts of becoming successful in whatever you do. Coupled with an above average – but not great - technical intelligence and the passion for what they do and what they believe the above mentioned famous people became successful in their specific subject, yes they became even very successful and the word „VERY“ is poison in this coincidence. It’s not easy to explain overconfidence. Maybe one of the best explanations I did find in an essay of Rolf Dobelli: “We do overrate systematically our knowledge and our prognoses-skills. The overconfidence-effect is measuring the difference between the real knowledge and the knowledge we think to have.” Quite surprising is the fact that experts in subjects of high complexity overrate their knowledge even more than non-experts. Conclusion: Be very sceptical with all sort of prognoses, especially if they come from so called experts! We have to be modest enough to admit that we do know much less than what we would like to know.

Coming to the above mentioned famous people who I already feel sorry for them because I believe they are already overconfident and did lose their sense for reality and the respect for people with other life-views: If you judge fair and without emotions, you have to admit that even one of the most hated personalities in western culture, Muammar al Gaddafi, did have some sort of sensible thesis when he was young, his basic theories in his „green book“  weren’t all that bad and to became the leader of Lybia he did need some sort of intelligence to win the race as a leader of this country – in whatever race it was. Today we just can feel sorry for him at best, we all do know in what kind of shape he is nowadays and all this is partly a result of becoming overconfident. The young José Mourinho was one of my most respected soccer-coaches I ever did follow. Fortunately Mourinho, Magath and Daum are just soccer-coaches – so their influence of doing bad things is limited to the not so important sports-world. In the case of Gaddafi it’s getting dangerous, dangerous for a whole country and maybe even for parts of the world.

In addition I did follow the unspectacular footprints of a lot of managers in companies who had an above average – but not great – intelligence, who did work hard and passionate and who became successful and did climb in the hierarchy. A lot of them became overconfident the sooner or later, did overrate their abilities, produced big mistakes and got fired. It’s very sad if I see what happened to José Mourinhos personality – nowadays Mourinho is partly dominated by close to pathologist conspiracy-theories, lack of respect in terms of treating people who are not 100% on his line and lately even his tactical football-strategies are sometimes very questionable... It’s very sad and even more than that to see what happened to personalities of some presidents, dictators and "sport-popes" who maybe in their young ages – before they became overconfident – had talented brains, were caring husbands and fathers and respectful in treating all kind of people, even with the ones they didn’t agree with. Conclusion for life: People with an above average intelligence can become dangerous if they are successful. People with a great intelligence must be our hope for a better world because they stay wise and modest enough if they are successful.

Conclusion for the hockey-world:

Never hire a coach who was very successful in the past, it's just a fairy-tale if he tells tha he knows how to win championships,  he just makes us believe that he knows… it’s very dangerous to overpay such a coach because you will have unreachable  expectations and you will be very disappointed. In addition some of the very successful coaches don’t work as hard anymore in the future, they are not critical enough anymore with themselves, they are not hungry enough anymore. Quite often I do read from such coaches: I don’t have to prove nothing anymore to nobody, and if you get in touch with this popular sentence of a possible new coach: Never hire him. You have to find the next, the future successful coach who has to prove that he is good, who is passionate and self-critical enough to learn and improve every day, you have to finde a wise, confident and modest personality. Of course this is much more difficult than just throwing big money on the table and presenting a coach decorated with numerous championship-rings.

Watch what happened with Othmar Hitzfeld and the Swiss football National team, watch what happened with the much hyped Canadien Hockey coach Glen Hanlon with the Slovakian Nationalteam and watch what happened with various decorated North American Coaches who were hired for big money and with even bigger expectations from Russian KHL-teams. Also in the NHL and in all sort of pro-sport-leagues there are coaches and GMs who still benefit from their reputation in the past and they are not doing much anymore…but of course they do know how to win a championship…smile…and too many people believe it… Please don't get me wrong: My thesis doesn't mean that you just have to look for young, dynamic coach-candidates, also old, experienced, wise, confident and modest coaches can fit to this profile. 

Thomas Roost, 9^th May 2011 

The big error of coach-changing-effects

In this season in the Swiss pro-league (12 teams) already 5 coaches got fired out of ongoing contracts. Classic mistakes, I believe. Wrong decisions, based on a reflex we also can notice in economy, in everyday’s life and even if we are self-critical enough we have to admit that we step into this trap again and again by ourselves.

In the meantime we do know that changing the coach in the middle- and longterm doesn’t bring measurable positive effects. Thank’s to the according scientific studies from NA universities who did prove this and showed clear results. Still, it’s a nearly unchangeable theses, that a coach-change very likely has a positive effect in the short-term. This is a classical so called „regression to the average error“.

We always have expectations into a hockey-team because all teams have a certain theoretical potential. It absolutely doesn’t matter whether this team is a bad, an average or a good team. Throughout a full season every team will face periods of time with not fulfilling, fulfilling and more than fulfilling expectations and potential. E.g. you have potential-wise an average team and start the season with a period of not fulfilling the expectations. In addition one of your key-players is injured. It’s likely that this team will find itself pretty soon at the bottom in the rankings. It’s a common reflex that you change the coach in such a situation. What happens then, especially if at the same time the injured key-player comes back? The sooner or later your team will find itself in a phase of fulfilling expectations or even overachieving and - right you are - your team will have better results, your team climb in the standing in a direction you did expect from the very beginning. Owner and GM are happy with their decision to change the coach because everybody thinks you play better now because of the new coach. A fatal error, it’s the before mentioned „regression to the average-error“. It’s just normal that an average team who plays bad the sooner or later plays average and sometimes even better than that. It doesn’t matter whether you change the coach or not. Actually it does matter because to fire a coach out of an ongoing contract costs a lot of unnecessary money.

I give you some examples from life to underline my thesis. You play golf with a certain handicap, so you know your normal level of playing. Always when you play bad you take a golf-lesson with your teacher and after this lesson you play better. You think it’s because of the lesson what is most likely wrong. Please take once in a while a gold-lesson after you overachieved your level in playing and tell me then the immediate result after this lesson... you most likely will play just on your normal level or even underachieving – because it’s just natural not to compete always on the best level you can. If you are chronically in pain in your back you notice that the pain is sometimes as always, sometimes a little bit better and sometimes worse. If it’s worse you go to your doctor to get some treatments and after that – right you are – you feel most probably better, but maybe not because of the treatment, it’s because of being very likely that you feel better anyway the sooner or later – it’s once again the „regression to the average-effect“.

The basics of the “regression to the average-mirror” is the human yearning of being able to control and influence everything. We do believe that for at least 95% of all problems on this planet to have the right answer and solution. The truth is that we probably know much less than we think. Ice-Hockey is a perfect stage for this human behavior: If the power-play is not working we practice the power-play. If the goalie is playing worse than expected we hire a goalie-coach und if we think that the problem is causing from mental-weakness we will hire a mental-coach. For everything and always the coaches, the media, the crowd and the owners have an answer. If a coach would be honest for once and tell the media that he doesn’t have an answer to this or that problem – what actually would honor him – he would be in big danger of getting sacked. Especially the power-play thesis is a good one in my eyes: Througout a full season there are times when the powerplay is working really well, there are times when it’s working just average and times when the power-play really is bad… and all this exactly with the same power-play-strategy, the same players and the same coach und not related to practicing powerplay or not. 

Please do think twice about my maybe not so common “wisdoms” before you throw them away. Please check in a self-critical way the lasting effect of so called “right” decisions.

Coming back to our hockey-teams. Of course you have to change coaches from time to time. You have to find the best possible coach for now and for the future. Also this recruiting is very important in a hockey-team. But changing the coach during an ongoing contract is in 90% of all cases the wrong decision in my eyes. It leads not to better results, we just think so if we are not self-critical enough.

Thomas Roost / 24^th March 2011

10 questions about teams in the Swiss Pro-Hockey-League

Why did the Rapperswil-Lakers with the highly praised new coach Igor Pawlow lose the series vs Lugano 0-4 while they did win all the regular season games vs Lugano in the time still being with fired coach Christian Weber?

Why did Fribourg-Gottéron lose often before they did change the coach and lost always with the new coach?

Why was Chris Mc Sorley, headcoach and Mr. Everything in Geneva – besides Davos' Arno Del Curto the most respected coach in the Swiss league – not able to win the series vs Zug?

Why did the fired “no name-coach” Colin Muller had approx. the same results with the ZSC-Lions as the Olympic- and World-Champion coach Sven-Ake Gustafsson did have with the same Zurich team?

Why does Biel win the playoff-series vs Ambri with a brave, offensive, attacking-style vs a defense-first-team? I’m used to read and hear that in “deadly-games” and deciding series always the defense-first-team will win.

Why did the Langnau Tigers did make the playoffs?

Why did the same Langnau Tigers lose 13 out of the last 15 season-games with exactly the same staff on and off the ice?

Why do the ZSC Lions invest year by year a lot of money in their highly appreciated junior-program and win dozens of junior-championship-titels…but didn’t produce yet just one single high-end-player (NHL-player, Swiss-National-Team core-player or ZSC-Lions first or second-line-player)?

Why do we have usually fast and clear answers to all these questions and why these answers walk most often on very thin ice when analysing it in a self-critical-way?

Thomas Roost

Central Scouting Europe, NHL                                          Zurich, 11^th March 2011

Is Swiss Junior-Hockey moving up or down?

The Swiss U20-team will finish 5^th or 6^th at the WJC after finishing 4^th last year. The U18-team finished 2^nd in a Five-Nations-Tournament (facing Czech Rep., Slovakia, Finland and Germany). The U16-team did win a Four-Nations-Tournament with Slovakia, Finland and Germany. The very good results lead us a bit to the wrong conclusions because these results overrate a bit the real level of Swiss Junior-Hockey. But it’s just a little bit. Personally I dare to say at this point that Swiss Junior Hockey did reach some sort of milestone, the Swiss did move up to the Slovaks and maybe even already did overtake them. I’m not a guy who values the result of a single game or a single tournament but my observations over the last 24 months led to this conclusion: Yes, we are right there, Swiss junior-hockey is even slightly better now than Slovak junior-hockey. This is a milestone and I do know very well what it takes to climb up in the ranking if you are already not very far away from the top. We are talking about No. 7 in the world. Compared with the Slovaks we have the better teams, better depth in the rosters, the Slovaks still have the slight edge in terms of producing outstanding talents.

What did make me happy following the recent games over Christmas (U20, U18 and U16) is the fact that our teams play with a lot of enthusiasm, with a lot of energy and with an optimistic approach. It’s not anymore the safety first destructive building a wall-approach – as it was a couple of years ago - the Swiss game-plans have now more variety, they skate very hard, the try to hit whatever they can catch and when they have the puck they really started to take some risks in a positive way. I appreciate this development very much. It will develop our players better than ever before.

What is still lacking in Swiss Junior Hockey is “High-End-Players”. It’s unrealistic to expect every year a handful of high-end-prospects but I don’t have an answer why we are still lacking star-players in the NHL. We do have good depth meanwhile and we do have a couple of players who are on the verge of becoming NHL-players (Niederreiter, Josi, Bärtschi) but we don’t have yet – at this point – players who are on the verge of becoming star-players or superstar-players in the NHL. We need them to take the next step. Slovakia, Germany, Belarus, even Austria and Slovenia have similar or even more very good NHL-players than the Swiss. Yes, we have Hiller but this is just the ticket to be allowed to compete because in today’s hockey every Top10-country has at least one very good goalie, so Hiller is much appreciated by me but he is not better than the No.1-goalies of other Top10-Hockey-countries – he is just right there. Streit is injured and if he plays again he is on a similar level than German d-man Ehrhoff. Our best forwards are not as good as the Slovenian Ance Kopitar. They are not as good as the best Slovak forwards (e.g. Gaborik), and with all respect to Mark Streit – he is not as good as the Slovak Zdeno Chara. Austria has one good or even very good and two decent NHL-forwards (Vanek, Grabner, Nodl). The Swiss have to close that gap first of all to the before-mentioned countries and - in case we want to move on – we have to improve significantly in the “star-player-category”.

What is also lacking in some parts of our hockey community is the understanding of our hockey-level. We are missing realistic expectations and the self-confidence to face the so called “brutal facts”. If I mix the media-comments before the U20-WJC and after finishing 5^th/6^th I did understand between the lines that a medal was somehow expected and that it is a slight disappointment to finish 5^th/6^th and losing 4:1 and 8:0 to Canada. The reality is: It was a great, great victory vs Germany – who had an excellent age-group in this tourney and definitely didn’t deserve to go down. It was a great, great victory vs the Slovaks who had a couple of high-end-forwards in their squad. The Swiss did win both games and these heroic wins were just great and not normal! The realistic chances to win these games for the Swiss were not better than 50:50.

We also have to respect that if you follow very closely a game between our best junior-hockey-players and e.g. the best US, Sweden, Canada and parts of the Russian and Finnish players – there is still a gap, sometimes even a big gap. Their best players are simply better educated, they skate better, they handle the puck better, they are bigger and stronger and the shot-quality is noticeably better than the average Swiss sho-quality – these are the brutal facts and these brutal facts won’t even change after a surprising win vs one of the big hockey-countries. As long as we lose 4 out of 5 games vs these big hockey-countries there is no reason to believe that we are right there. We are not! And if we are not happy that we are not there yet we have to be self-critical enough to face these facts and to fight for improvement. This improvement will come with “state-of the art-projects”, with concepts and with money who supports all this. I can tell you I see these projects and I did read some very good Swiss hockey-concepts for improving but sometimes I feel that the most important puzzle-piece is still missing: It’s the teachers, the coaches, the educators of our educators. If you want to be world-class - in whatever discipline it might be - it’s a question of quantity (how many hours do I practice a certain thing, in our case hockey) and quality of methodic/didactic. The combination of the most practice-time and the best teachers lead together with a certain personality of the athlete (passionate, self-critical, hard-working and mentally tough) to world-class. What Swiss hockey is still missing – and it will be one of the last puzzle-pieces to world-class – is this high-end-teaching, world-class hockey-educators. Don’t get me wrong. What Swiss hockey achieved so far is a lot and we have to appreciate and respect this, I definitely do so! Hundreds of junior-coaches did spend big amounts of their spare-time educating boys who want to learn playing hockey. They don’t get real money for it, they just do it for fun because they are puck-heads, they love the sport of hockey! All these coaches and educators are responsible for what we have achieved so far. But now – if we want to become realistic medal-contenders and if we want to develop “high-end” hockey players, if we want to “produce” regular NHL-Allstars, we have to take the next step, we have to try to find the best possible hockey-educators and bring them to Switzerland, helping to improve all our great coaches, help them to take the next step from being very good hockey-educators to world-class hockey-educators.

Coming back to my question in the topic: Switzerland did take one step in the right direction. Switzerland did move up from No. 8 to No. 7 – let’s say in the age-group 15-25. But Swiss hockey is still several steps away from the best hockey-countries in the world. I just partly agree that the main reason for this is the small amount of hockey-players compared to Canada e.g. The bigger amount of hockey-players means that a country has more depth and the proof for this is if we watch how the NA-Import-players – who are not good enough for the NHL – still dominate the scoring-lists in our league. I don’t agree that a small country necessarily will produce a lower quality national-team – we just need 26 very good players for a great national-team. Because you need “just” 26 good players this gives also smaller countries like Switzerland a good chance to compete on the highest-possible level. Of course, if you can choose from more players you always will have an advantage but this is just part of the truth. If we do everything “state of the art” – we can compete with everybody on a national-team-level. So let’s try to do everything “state of the art”. Let’s face the brutal facts. Let’s be proud of what we achieved and now let’s go for the next step!

Thomas Roost 
Central Scouting Europe                                                4th January 2011