The Swiss Hockey League - Now and a prediction for the regular season 2012/2013

The NHL-lockout will be over soon and Swiss-League heaven on earth will change into sometimes grey reality. Instead of caviar from magic Seguin, veal-shoulder from classy Zetterberg and fillet of beef from brainy Bergeron we will eat melted Swiss cheese again. For a couple of months we got spoilt by a couple of hockey-cooks with 19 Gault-Millaut points but soon we will go back to mothers kitchen again. We all do know that mothers kitchen is not bad, especially not if you don’t know the star-cooks. You always like what you are used to and after a short hang-over we will start to like our Swiss-League and the according players again.

The question is what will last and what will be the future. Will the impression last that the best players in the world are still two steps ahead of our best players? Maybe for a couple of weeks but sooner or later we start again to overrate our hockey; we will think that we are a serious medal-contender in World Championships or even Olympics. And if it once would happen by mistake – the medal – then we will think that we did definitely arrive at the top of the world.

Coming back to the Swiss League. Who will be favorite to finish first in regular-season without the lockout-stars?

1.  ZSC Lions

It’s an easy choice, they have clearly the best quality players on paper in their roster. With Roman Wick they did get for „free“ the best Swiss forward after Damien Brunner. For NA-readers to clarify: In our league teams can buy players for money and don’t have to give anything in return. So money is by far the most important asset you need for having success in our league. Boring? In a way yes...but still for some low-budget teams it’s exciting and a huge challenge to try to compete with the big budget-teams in Zurich, Lugano, Bern, Davos, Zug and already again Kloten. So, coming back to Zurich, they have the best team on paper with lots of Swiss national team players and two high reputation imports, Steve Tambellini and Ryan Shannon. Yes, I agree, they also have a handful of highly paid middle-class players but if you have the budget this doesn’t hurt at all. We don’t have a salary-cap. What does hurt is the questionable signing of defender Matt Lashoff who even had a tryout-period... and still they did sign him. But again, they have such a good roster overall that such „mistakes“ don’t really hurt as much as it would in a salary-cap-league.

2. HC Davos

Davos still has an unbelievable good team-roster with Von Arx, Bürgler, Forster, Sykora, Sciaroni, Hofmann, Grossmann, Genoni, Wieser, Steinmann, Rizzi. Of course, some cornerstones of this team become older but Davos always manages to get the best young pro-players up to the pittoresque mountains because their coach, Arno Del Curto, has the reputation of developing players better than other coaches. I wonder how long he will still benefit from this reputation because if you analyze this rumor you will find out sooner or later that this reputation is mainly just clever self-marketing. Davos did make mistakes this summer in terms of import-players. They were not self-critical enough or didn’t work hard enough to replace some of their aging import-players. This was too risky and this is the reason why they are not No. 1 anymore, at least not on paper.

3. SC Bern

The SC Bern was always a powerhouse in the Swiss league, is a powerhouse right now and will be also in the future. They have money and compared to other teams (Zurich, Davos, Kloten, Lugano) they don’t depend on a Swiss multimillionaire as a budget-booster, they really are financially healthy because of doing just great in „normal business“. Hats off for this! So, no surprise that they also have a good hockey-team. If there is a good player in our league they always could easily buy this player, they still do and they definitely will do so in future. So they have the money and as I explained before the money is by far the most important asset in our league. Why Bern is not top 2 in this regular-season-analyses? For some reason they want to proof to the Swiss hockey-world that they are also top even if they just hire average-players and not always the ones with the highest price-tags. The SC Bern will pay a price for this and this price is that they don’t have the best team. In addition they didn’t seem to be very lucky with their import-player-decisions lately.

4. Servette-Geneva

Servette-Geneva will even have a really good chance to finish the regular-season even higher than 4th place. They had an excellent start into the season and will benefit from the already „eaten“ points until the very end. On paper this team did make the biggest improvements since last season. Excellent additions with e.g. Kevin Romy (Philly draftpick) Cody Almond (this Minnesota draftpick doesn’t count as an import-player because of Swiss relatives) and Julian Walker (Minnesota draftpick), great shape of their goalie Tobias Stephan (former Dallas property). Boss, Chris McSorley, brother of former NHL-goon Marty McSorley, does refresh year by year his team with always solid additions year by year, he really is doing a great job and this with definitely not the same budget-possibilities as the top-teams.

5. Kloten Flyers

Despite the loss of the already described Roman Wick to the ZSC Lions, the Kloten Flyers still have a very good team on paper. One of the very best defense-corps for sure in our league, a good team-leader with Viktor Stancescu and some decent young forwards. In addition Denis Hollenstein did improve into the third-best Swiss forward in our league behind Damien Brunner and Roman Wick. The Kloten Flyers should finish 5th with this team. The big questionmark are the import-players. The newly acquired imports are not good enough to make the difference. If they have money – and they definitely have after the arrival of new multimillionaire Philippe Gaydoul – Kloten should really try to invest into more dominant imports.

6. HC Lugano

Lugano comes from down low. Despite the probably biggest budget of all teams they didn’t find good team-chemistry in the last couple of years. Too much talent, not enough grinders, this was Lugano in the last couple of years. Since Larry Huras took over one can notice a complete change in philosophy. As he did in Bern, Huras counts mainly on grinders and has problems to work with talented players. Lugano is now in a transition-process and right now in my eyes they have theoretically a good mixture of talent and grinding-players. This makes Lugano dangerous in this season. For the future Lugano must take care about not losing the balance, Huras has the tendency to put too much weight on mainly grinding players, as he did in Bern before. If the management is strong enough to stop him getting rid of all highly talented players then Lugano will be a force for the next couple of years.

7. Fribourg-Gottéron

Fribourg-Gottéron still has a good team. Actually I’m a bit surprised that I rank them just 7th at this point but to be honest between 2 and 7 it’s getting pretty close. Gottéron also tried to become more of a grinding team under Hans Kossmann – who is a Larry Huras  and  Chris McSorley student. But he still has the artists, the skilled Julien Sprunger, Andrej Bykov, Simon Gamache, Pavel Rosa, Sandy Jeannin and Christian Dubé. In addition dman Romain Loeffel did improve and Greg Mauldin seems to be a real solid import-player. I’m not sold yet with the goaltending but maybe Benjamin Conz will proof me wrong.

8. EV Zug

Zug did win the regular-season last year even though they did lose Raphael Diaz to the NHL. In this season they will lose also Damien Brunner. I feel that Zug will have not a very easy season without Brunner, Diaz and Zetterberg. The defense looks shaky and the confidence into their goaltending is not too big. Import-player Josh Holden doesn’t seem to be on the same level as he was in the last couple of years and new import Linus Omark must proof that he is also a warrior. A lot of question-marks for me in this team but still, I guess they will make the playoffs, especially if the lockout will end only end of December because until then the super-trio Zetterberg/Bruner/Diaz will make the difference in most games and this means extra-points for Zug.

9. EHC Biel

Biel probably has the smallest budget of all teams but manages to bring a competitive team to the ice year by year. This year is special, Biel takes a risky but very interesting roster-strategy: All power into forwards and less priority into d-men. A big challenge for Biel are also always the import-players, this again because of a limited and strictly controlled budget. However it looks like that the arrivals of Marc-Antoine Pouliot and especially Jacob Micflikier really did lift the EHC Biel into a serious playoff-contender. Also some new young players did help in the overall-perspective. Still, the big problem of the EHC Biel is their defense. They try to compensate this with surprising passion and fighting-spirit. Right now Biel also benefits from magic Seguin- and Kane-moments but also after the lockout ends it would be a mistake to count out Biel, especially if they manage to replace the injured Ahren Spylo with at least a decent import-player. As a consultant for the EHC Biel I have to admit that of course I’m not really neutral with my report about this team, but believe me: They really do a very good job in this ever underrated hockey-club.

10. Langnau Tigers

The Tigers are unlucky in this season because of a lot injured key-players. It’s another proof that in my country Switzerland we have the tendency to overrate the success-influence of the head-coaches. Arno Del Curto is the one example: After suffering some injuries of key-players (VonArx,  Sykora) even Davos did fall out of the playoff-rankings despite the „magics“ of Arno Del Curto. The same in Langnau. Their head-coach John Fust was celebrated as a real hockey-magician not so long ago. Now with some key-players fighting with injuries everybody can see that even magicians can’t translate a low-skill-team into a winner. Or maybe there are no head-coach-magicians in our league? Am I allowed to ask this question?

11. Rapperswil-Jona Lakers

Rapperswil was very bad last season, did invest some additional money to go into this season and did improve... a bit... but not enough to become a top8-team. The transfers were a bit too conservative in my eyes but still as the Rapperswil-Jona Lakers you can be happy with the addition of Adrian Wichser, Duri Camichel and Mauro Joerg and also David Aebischer might have been not really a bad decision if you would know the really dry goalie-market in Switzerland last spring. I’m just a bit disappointed with the conservative import-decisions and like in Biel, the Rapperswil defense really looks shaky!

12. Ambri-Piotta

Poor Ambri-Piotta. Probably the most passionate and emotional fans, a great tradition, a historical team in the Swiss hockey-scene but even with the addition of Egyptian business-man Samih Saviris as one of the main sponsors Ambri remains to be a low-budget-team with a rotten down infrastructure. If Davos is the lucky team because of a high reputation place up in the pitoresque Swiss mountains - what makes a player quite often signing a smaller contract than he would have elsewhere - nobody wants to go to the village of Ambri. You need to show some extra-dollars if you want to lure a really good player to this place and in the end the result is always the same: The desperados, the players who don’t get a League A-contract in other teams anymore, might get a contract in Ambri. So: Year by year Ambri Piotta has the worst team on paper, in theory, and it’s always a fight for survival. Ambri Piotta has my deepest respect but they simply don’t have a good enough team.

These rankings don’t mean that these teams will end in the standings exactly like this. This would be my ranking without any lockout-players from the beginning of the season and of course the lockout influences the happening a bit, although all teams have lockout-players and so it doesn’t make as much of a difference as many might think. Means, if a team ends up significantly higher than in my presented ranking this would either indicate that e.g. the coaching-staff did do a really good job or maybe also that my ranking was just plain bad...

By the way, this ranking doesn’t mean nothing at all for the playoffs. Success in the playoffs is mainly being lucky in my eyes. Do you have some lucky bounces in these games? Are your key-players free of injuries? Is your goalie hot in these just some couple of weeks or couple of games? Don’t read too much into playoff-success or playoff-failure. Pointing fingers to playoff-heroes or playoff-scapegoats is the task of the cheap newspapers, just take it with a grain of salt. It has very little to do with reality. 

Thomas Roost, 24th November 2012