Sunday, January 31, 2016

Arriving in the NHL - What to expect and how to prepare: Part 2 - Defenders

To play as a defender in the NHL might be the toughest, the most difficult position in hockey. There are a few trends for modern defenders. Modern NHL-defenders need to be mobile, quick and good skaters. This is needed because modern NHL-forwards are usually extremely good, fast, speedy and mobile skaters and if you can’t adapt to this with your own skating-abilitiy you are toast! I notice more and more NHL-teams buying out huge contracts of some sort of old-fashioned d-men because it’s obvious that they don’t fit anymore to the fast and speedy NHL-games as it is played nowadays. If you are 30+ you also start to lose the one and the other step in speed and quickness and this hurts a lot. So, experienced veteran NHL-d-men have a hart time to keep up with what is requested from them, so you need to be a real star-defenseman if you don’t want to be in danger of becoming a so called buyout-victim. In addition you need to have a really good puck-control and you have to read the game very quickly. There is no time in the NHL to control the puck and then watch what you could do with it. You have to think the game in advance, not losing time with preparing the puck and not losing time with thinking what to do. These are exactly the important split-seconds you lose for effective plays in transition. Another thing I want to point to is the stick-work without the puck. Often I see in that d-men attack the body first of the puck-carrier. This is wrong. First you have to attack the puck: Stick on the puck and then attack the body. Efficient poke-checking gets more and more important. As a defender you have the responsibility that the shots of the opposing players don’t come through, don’t come to the net. With clever stickwork, great pokechecking you can deflect these shots so they might even land in the stands. James Neal did mention that one of the best defenders in deflecting shots is Paul Martin, they both played in Pittsburgh. Paul Martin had the knack of deflecting all shots up in the roof. Paul Martin might not be one of the most famous NHL-defenders in today’s NHL but still: Try to catch his unique ability of deflecting shots. Martin is playing with San Jose at this point. Moving on to the more common names I want to start with:


Drew Doughty
Doughty is a player with huge confidence and some sort of positive arrogance but what really sets him apart from other good d-men is his intuition. In today’s modern tight
Drew Doughty: Confidence and instincts

backchecking type of hockey, offensive, rushing d-men become more and more important for creating goalscoring-chances with the second wave and if you watch Doughty closely you will soon find out that he is one of the very best in anticipating the right moment to pick his spot and jump into the play. Doughty knows when to step back and when to attack.


Shea Weber
Shea Weber is a tower of a d-man and owns a brutal hard slapper. One of his specialities is his cleverness to manage himself into a clean shot position. In addition watch his textbook body-positioning in the corners.

Ryan Suter
Ryan Suter plays close to 30 minutes per game and you can only do this if you own a very smart hockey-brain what tells you when you have to go full out and when you can step back and control the game with just sound positioning. Watch also his high-end breakout-passing.


Duncan Keith
One of his best assets is his lateral skating. This allows him to defend very effectively in the neutral zone, thanks also to his great poke-checking abilities. Keith is one of the best in terms of what I did tell in very beginning of the column. Stick on the puck, great poke-checking. 
Duncan Keith: A very smart poke-checker

Duncan Keith is not very flashy but extremely efficient. In addition he puts himself better than others in really good scoring-positions without the puck.


P.K. Subban
Like Doughty he plays with a huge confidence. Technically you won’t find many players with better edgework than him what allows him to change from backward to forward and the other way round in a split-second and all this without losing real speed.



Erik Karlsson
You find first of all great skating-abilities if you study Erik Karlsson but his probably best asset is that he has the knack of getting most of his shots through traffic and on net. His shots get very seldom blocked. He creates his shooting-lanes for himself with high-end dekes and uses then this extra split-second to find a clean shooting-lane. Deking as a d-man is often an overlooked asset. You also can deke the opposing puck-carrier and making him moving to one side if you indiciate a tiny little bit that you might move to the other side.


Kris Letang
Letang’s biggest asset is his confidence with the puck. He always plays with his head-up and is always looking for a promising play to develop.



Alex Pietrangelo
Petro is a special player in an often overlooked aspect, the so called “escapability”. If there is a mess of sticks and players, a scrum and a chaotic situation in front of the net or in the corners he more often than not comes out with the puck on his stick. Watch this special asset in his game, it’s really astonishing.
Alex Pietrangelo: State of the art escapability



In the very end I want to tell again: Watch these players, tape games, study their plays, study how they react in what situations. You will learn a lot! Enjoy!


And go for it - because its THE cup!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSd8CqBEbcY


This 3-part-column contains quotes from Mark Streit, Jonathan Quick, James Neal, Connor Hellebuyck, Kevin Shattenkirk, Andrew Berkshire, Drew Doughty, Scott Stevens, Patrick Kearns and Logan Couture. Thank you!


Horgen, 31st January 2016 / Thomas Roost









Thursday, January 28, 2016

What is wrong with SCB?

The SCB is fighting for a playoff spot and this causes a lot of emotions, controversial opinions and polemic. As follows, I will present you my personal opinion about SC Bern
What are the reasons for this unexpected fight? How good is this team? Is there anything wrong with the coaching? Can SCB still become champion? 

Passionate fans!
First of all: The main reason for this somehow disappointing result in the standings is the huge amount of injuries. Important players were injured, the goalie situation is unfortunate, they are desperately missing Eric Blum plus they also had other significant player injuries. These injuries are the most important and at the same time the most unspectacular reason for the not so good results at this point. Of course there are also other reasons:
Important to know: Even a complete healthy SCB is not on top of the league with their roster. ZSC, HCD and Lugano have the better rosters. Zug is very close. The actual roster right now (without Bührer, Blum) is pretty average and we have a handful of teams with similar average rosters (Geneva, Fribourg, Kloten, Lausanne). Don’t get me wrong: Even this SCB roster that is playing right now (without Bührer and without Blum) is definitely good enough for a playoff-spot, but it’s pretty close and with a little bit of bad luck – which SCB lately had in some games – they will be empty-handed in the end. 
What went wrong with the SCB-roster? Most of the SCB core players are already pretty old (Plüss, Helbling, Gerber, Rüfenacht, Roy, Jobin). The age problem is not the biggest problem, but still… In the tendency, it’s something to talk about. Secondly, I noticed in recent years that a lot of transfers had the obvious target to make the team bigger, stronger, more aggressive and meaner (Rüfenacht, Helbling, Moser, Reichert, Krüger). A couple of years ago this was the one and only NHL-wisdom: “To become big, mean, strong and to have warriors is the only way to survive in the playoffs”. Not so much anymore. The game has changed, even in the NHL: The present and the future of the NHL and of hockey in general is skilled and fast players. Smaller, skilled and fast players get a bit more chances again and this also affects the d-men. In the old days, rugged, hard-nosed, big and strong d-man were on top of the shopping-list when asked about d-men. Not so much anymore: Also the modern d-man has to be a fast, quick, mobile skater, has to have good puck-control-skills and must be able to be a good, quick thinking transition player. Otherwise d-men can’t handle the skilled and fast forwards and can’t handle the overall speed of the game.
Coming back to SCB: Eric Blum is such a modern d-man 
The best SCB puck-carrier and -mover through neutral zone
but if I look at the others I can’t see much of mobile, speedy, puck-moving d-men in the SCB-defense plus some of them are in an age where you lose a step or two and that’s why the loss of Blum is hurting so much! To put in a little bit of polemic: The SCB 15/16 is too much old-style-hockey and not suited perfectly for the modern game. Skills and speed are more important now and probably also in future. Size and strength will be a little bit less important. The perfect team has a good balance between these two aspects and in my opinion the SCB 15/16 leans a bit too much on size, strength and raw grit, especially in their third and fourth units.
The lack of skills was obvious in the Champions Hockey League-games vs Scandinavian teams and I was wondering pretty early whether the skill-level will be enough for being a top SUI-league team. A third reason is the underperformance of captain Martin Plüss and Simon Bodenmann. Is it fair to criticize a great sportsman like Martin Plüss? Yes, it is, he is the captain and the leader of this team. A wise person did once tell: that “a leader takes more than his share of the blame and gets less than his share of the credit” – So, Martin Plüss scored just a bit more than 0.5 points per game so far and this is simply by far not enough. Me too, I don’t know the reason for this but I have theses: 
Great captain, subpar season
Martin Plüss is already 38 or 39 years old and it was just a question of time when he will start to slow down. So, his regress is not completely unexpected. Similar goes for Simon Bodenmann. He already had a bad season last year in Kloten and actually he never had a really great season. I admit that he has decent skills and can shoot the puck but I guess he was a bit overrated and people in Bern might expect too much from him. He is a good player but not that good. Obviously, the SCB 15/16 it’s not quite good enough to be on the level of the very best. There is not much missing, they need maybe just one or two really good acquisitions for the next season, they definitely need another good puck-moving, mobile defender and then they are again on even keel with the best in the league. But right now they are not right there, the team on paper is not THAT good. 
What about coaching? I don’t think that the coaching is a real problem. I didn’t like the one or the other quote from Lars Leuenberger but I also can’t see really bad mistakes in terms of systems, game-plans and so on. Actually, there is anyway not a hockey-system that clearly beats others. The system-discussion is vastly overrated in my opinion. And anyway: Nobody of us is part of the team and can listen to what he is telling about game-plans and individual requests he asks for in the locker-room. If we want to know how good of a coach Lars Leuenberger is we have to ask the players, they know best. Of course they are employees and the head-coach is their boss in a way, so they might not answer real frankly but still...  
What can we still expect from the SCB in this season? Everything: The SCB can become champion although it’s not likely. They can become champion because the luck-factor in the playoffs is very big, much bigger than in the regular-season (a hot streak of the opposing goalie? An injury to your keyplayer or even two of your keyplayers? One or two unlucky bounces?). All this decides playoff-series much more than we are prepared to believe and that’s why my dear SCB-fans: Don’t give up, the dream is alive! The championship is still possible, not likely but possible! Enjoy your SCB!

28th January 2016 / Thomas Roost

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Arriving in the NHL - What to expect and how to prepare

Part 1/3 – Scoring-Forwards

If you are a young talented Swiss player and you face the NHL-guys in a camp for the first time you have to expect that this game is played on a completely different level. The speed and the intensity are off the charts. You see monsters out there, Brent Burns, Alex Ovechkin, Jamie Benn, they shoot the puck and you will think: Oh my god, where did I land? In net you will face 6’4” or even bigger walls like Connor Hellebuyck, Ben Bishop or Devan Dubnyk and they wear pillows and stand in your way and they can do full splits on skates, unbelievable! If you follow these shooters and these goalies the first thing you will find out is: You have to become a better shooter. In the NHL, everybody shoots it hard. You have to be prepared to this some sort of shock and most important: Yes, you are allowed to be impressed but you are not allowed to give up. If you have certain smarts you will adapt step by step. And again: Never give up!

How to prepare?
Learn from the best! Of course you have to be physically and mentally prepared but this is just the ticket to the game. If you want to win the game you have to be prepared much more: My biggest and most important advise is: Learn from the very best! Watch and tape NHL-games and follow specifics of certain players. As follows I will help you to identify these specifics in what players. In addition you also can prepare in terms of developing hockey-sense. Hockey sense: Unteachable, Either you are born with it, or you have not... Not true. Hockeysense is teachable und you can improve this of course while playing tons of games and analysing them but also with modern support such as https://www.intelligym.com/hockey/improving-hockey-sense e.g. Personally I don’t know whether this is the best product on the market or not. I just want to remind you, that there exist systems you can use, you should use, actually you have to use in terms of improving your hockey sense, in terms of preparing for the arriving in the big league, the NHL. Do hockey-players watch film? Of course they do, they watch hours long every week, it’s their job to figure out how to make life miserable for opposing players and it’s their job to learn and to “borrow” some good stuff from the very best. So, if you want to succeed in the NHL study the game, study and evaluate the best players and try to improve your hockey-sense with state of the art technical support.
You can improve your hockeysense!


So, let’s face the players I really recommend to follow, to study. I will start with some “secrets” of the best scoring-forwards. Here we go:

Scoring-Forwards:
As a forward you definitely try to score goals and try to find ways to prepare goals. As I mentioned before you have to learn to shoot the puck, to learn to shoot the puck like the best players in the world. You won’t make it to the NHL if you don’t become a really good shooter. You have to realise that most pucks don’t come to you clean and you might have to fire a shot unbalanced and on one leg plus there is no time to look down, settle the puck and so on. This is not junior-hockey we are talking about. In the NHL you just have a split-second to make a decision for a shot-release. At the same moment the monster-goalie is pushing-out hard and takes away the open space. You have to learn to shoot the puck unbalanced, you have to learn to use the defenseman as a screen to your advantage. You have to learn to take your body to one side of the dman and releasing the puck on the other side. James Neal is doing this well and I also did see such clever shots from Auston Matthews. Goalies hate such screens. Changing the angle in a split-second is another high-end weapon for real snipers and you can do this with a so called toe-drag move. You hold the puck far outside of your body, then pulling it in your feet followed by a quick snapper. Again James Neal is a master of this move. But now let’s move on to some unique weapons of some of the best forwards in the world. I did tell you already about James Neal, just try to follow him and his shooting-strategies. Here we go with

Sidney Crosby
It’s difficult to tell what you should watch with him because he is doing everything so well. His lower-body-strength is exceptional as are his wrists and forearms and he plays with a nearly flat blade but it’s maybe his backhand-shot what really stands out. Watch him shooting the puck backhand, it’s the best in the world. Also very impressive with Crosby is his compete level. Watch him competing in every single shift and in all the corner-battles and face-offs.

Jonathan Toews
Like Crosby also Toews does everything really well. What stands out with Toews is that he is constantly on the move and his positioning is also high-end. He always finds the right spots for the right plays. Watch him moving his feet and where he goes without the puck. You won’t find better players in these aspects.


Vladimir Tarasenko

He is the master of creating scoring-chances and this individually and in terms of creating opportunities for his linemates. He has a high-end mixture of physical strength (he is very stocky) and please watch his exceptional balance! All this goes with very good stickhandling and great patience, he is one of the most patient shooters in the game.
Vladimir Tarasenko, the Tank



Anze Kopitar
He still is a bit underrated because he might not be as flashy as others but please pay attention to his excellent defensive responsibility and his perfect defensive stick-work. He anticipates the plays very well and uses his stick to break down plays. Also his effortless skating is worth a closer look.

Pavel Datsyuk
Probably the best hands in the NHL, maybe just Patrick Kane is on a similar level in this aspect. Follow his hand-skills and watch how he can hide the puck on his stick and how he shoots the puck without ever looking at the net.

Ryan Getzlaf
He plays with a long stick and is a real power-house. Watch him how he loves to play behind the net and he is a master of “provocating” so called dirty goals arising from multiple rebounds.

Henrik Sedin
With Henrik Sedin I do recommend you trying to learn from his unbelievable backhand-passing-quality and watch how well he is protecting the puck.

Alex Ovechkin
I guess everybody knows about his unreal heavy shot. What is unique is that he can shoot the puck with a canon from nearly everywhere, there is nearly no spot on the ice you are allowed to underrate an Ovi-shot.
The one and only Ovi

Patrick Kane
Like Datsyuk he has a ridiculous pair of hands, his stickhandling quickness is off the charts and please also watch his shot-release, world-class!

Jaromir Jagr
Is there a better player in the world along the walls than Jaromir Jagr? Definitely not. Watch him playing keep-away, this is state of the art and he is still going and going and going and is still the best in this and still one of the best players out there in general.

Steven Stamkos
Talking about shot-release you don’t have to go further than to Steven Stamkos. One-timing the puck? Study Steven Stamkos.

John Tavares
With John Tavares I always take him as a posterboy in terms of how strong he is on his feet and how easily he can absorb hits and then drives directly and dynamically to the net. His skating seems to be a bit underrated as he really uses good edgework what helps him to create scroing-chances.

Max Pacioretty
MaxPac is the Mr. snapshot. He can release this type of shots so quickly and with so much power, the goalie never has a chance for a reflex. The goalie has to anticipate his shots if he wants to have a chance to stop them.

Jamie Benn
Jamie Benn is the ultimate hockey-animal. Not only Drew Doughty tells that it is unbelievable tough to play against him. Watch him how he plays tough as nails. I did tell that James Neal is good in using  d-men as a screen in 1-on-1-situations. Jamie Benn is the best in this, watch him!
Jamie Benn

Tyler Seguin
If you watch Tyler Seguin you will quickly find exceptional acceleration from 2nd to 3rd gear in his game but what makes him really special is that he is doing more often than not the completely unexpected. His plays are sometimes not logical at all and that’s why he is very difficult to read for defenders and goalies.

In my next column we will take a closer look at the defenders.












And go for it - because its THE cup!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSd8CqBEbcY


This 3-part-column contains quotes from Mark Streit, Jonathan Quick, James Neal, Connor Hellebuyck, Kevin Shattenkirk, Andrew Berkshire, Drew Doughty, Scott Stevens, Patrick Kearns and Logan Couture. Thank you!

Horgen, 26th January 2016 / Thomas Roost


Saturday, January 16, 2016

Swiss Hockey: Where we are and where we go

First of all: Congratulations to the HCD. They did carry the Swiss hockey-torch in the Champions-League and played very well, impressive fast paced transition-hockey! Also in the semifinal where Davos was more unlucky than really bad but to be fair: Davos had some lucky bounces in the quarterfinal and so we shouldn’t blame bad luck for the brutal loss vs Frölunda.

But the HCD is not my point, the HCD is the exception to the rule. My first impressions from September 15 got confirmed with what happened since then. The Champions Hockey League (the league who is missing teams from the two very best leagues in the world, the NHL and KHL) is easily dominated by Finnish/Swedish teams and this despite the Swedish league is missing close to 200 players playing abroad and in Finnland it’s more than 100 plus they have significant smaller budgets than our teams… and they are still dominant in this competition… Our U18- and U20-teams got washed up from world class teams in the recent Christmas-competitions and the future looks definitely not so bright. I’m a bit worried about the average level of our 98 and 99 born age-groups. There are much more tight fights vs Denmark, Germany and Latvia on the horizon than semifinals vs the very best: This is the reality at this point and the most probable reality for the near future and I hope you are all with me if I tell: This is not good enough.

Finland did widen the gap between them and us quite a lot recently 
FIN again World-Champions U20!

and the US, CAN, SWE and partly also RUS are clearly two steps ahead of us anyway. On the other end, the pressure of countries like LAT and DEN is growing, also GER, BLR, NOR are positioning themselves in our lee and are just waiting for a SUI sidestep to overtake us. We definitely can’t be happy with this. We have to be proud enough to just not accept this position in the international hockey-world. We should try to do everything possible and impossible to improve. It starts with the amount of kids learning to play hockey. We have to intensify these efforts, we have to produce emotional and soul-touching campaigns and we need famous story-tellers and ambassadors of our great sport, the sport of hockey! Yes, I know, we don’t have posterboys yet in the mold of Jari Kurri, Teemu Selanne or Peter Forsberg but still… we could easily build great stories about our first real NHL-star player Roman Josi and about the silver medal winning team at the World Championship in 2013. We need to sell our sport better and we have the best reasons for that because hockey is the best team-sport ever! The smell in the locker-rooms, the dynamic and speed of the game, the sound of powerful ice-skating, the tears, the sweat, the celebrations, enforcers and geniuses, soft hands and booming slapshots, crazy goalies, warm-hearted fans, ice-cold scorers plus creative and funny journalists. All this is hockey and much more, priceless! All kids should try playing hockey, we want you and you’ll find a great schooling for life and unparalleled adventures.

After done that we also have to discuss what to do better with the kids who play hockey. Our hockey-education is already on a high level but we still have to improve. We need the ambition to become not just good but the best, we need the ambition to develop not just a good hockey-program but the best. We need the ambition to educate not just good hockey-coaches but the best. Let’s go for it. Let’s grab for the best programs, let’s dig for the best hockey-teachers because our already good coaches deserve to learn from the very best and our kids deserve to learn from the latest findings in hockey-training, deserve to get state of the art hockey-teaching.

What I notice in Swiss hockey is that we managed to develop much more good players compared to the past. This did lead to the fact that we have now much better players in third and fourth units in the league A und much better competition in den league B. But what is still missing – compared to the world-class-hockey-countries – are high-end players. Approx. 20 players who can compete with the very best in the world and this means if we play them we win three out of 10 games and tie a couple of them. Finland is on this level now and we need the ambition to become as good as Finland, this is not unrealistic in the long term. Unfortunately this is a loooooong and winding road and the one promising instrument what was in the pipeline (the Academy in Winterthur for the very best talents) unfortunately did fade away, what a pity! 
The US NDTP-Program - we need something like that!

Believe me or not: We need such a program, we need to develop star-players and I mean NHL star-players. Compared with other countries I guess we have the infrastructure and the financial potential to implement such a program what develops high-end players year by year. Let’s come together and reach for the stars and we will have stars, NHL stars, world-class hockey-players! Who joins me on this road? The road starts with telling where we are and where we want to go. We have to tell this again and again… again and again. How to eat an elephant? One bite at a time.


Horgen, 15th January 2016 / Thomas Roost

Monday, January 4, 2016

WJC U20 Ice-Hockey / Switzerland is facing reality

Switzerland finished 9th in the WJC U20 and in Switzerland this is felt as a huge disappointment by the majority of hockey-fans. In the media and fan-forums I did find aggressive and emotional comments in direction of the coaches and some irritating opinions about the team that defeated us in the fight for a quarterfinal qualification. Before I dare to comment about the Swiss performance I really want to congratulate to Denmark who not only surprised us with the win vs Switzerland but also with the way they did win the game: Denmark was simply slightly better than our team, they were faster and with more noticeable individuals. Denmark played really well and this defeat was far from a Swiss scandal or very bad effort, coaching-mistakes or whatever. Denmark was good, better than Switzerland in this game and they also showed what they can do in the quarterfinal vs Russia. It seems to pay off more and more that a lot of young Danish players choose the path to play in Sweden in an already young age.

Coming back to the Swiss: It was an eye-opening event for our hockey. Usually we complain about that the other teams are bigger, stronger and more experienced. This was definitely not the case this year. In terms of size and weight the Swiss were just middle of the pack and with Simon Kindschi we even presented the heaviest of all players in the WJC. We did show up with a good team in relation to what we usually can offer. Our 97borns - who are probably one of the best age-groups lately – competed with the best in the world and we have to face reality: We are just not there, we don’t belong to the best of the world. Our best players couldn’t make the difference vs Denmark, our best players were outclassed in the games vs the top nations from their best players. This is the reality. Our negative games (vs SWE, DEN and USA) or positive games (vs CAN) were not the result of bad or good coaching, or bad or good team-chemistry or whatever. It is the result of having the not so good players. A good result vs a top-nation is not what we can expect, a good result vs a top-nation is an exception and of course there are also exceptions to the bad… but to be honest I’m not so sure whether the defeat vs Denmark was an exception… it is definitely the smaller surprise than to win something vs a top nation.

We did already witness Auston Matthews in our pro-league and we could see how much better he is than our best players but we might have thought that he is an exceptional player worldwide, a player who comes up once in ten years or so. Not so much: Also Finland, a country with a 1/3 smaller population than Switzerland, will show up with two or three high-end prospects (Top10-potential) for the upcoming draft in June and these players are close to or even on Matthews level.

 
Patrik Laine / Jesse Puljujärvi - fan favorites :-)
 We in Switzerland have to be happy if there will be just one player drafted in the late rounds comes June 2016... Not to mention Sweden and I don’t want to go into the other countries. To summarize: The best players of the tourney are simply one, two or three steps ahead of our best players, the best players in the world are the better skaters, the better stickhandlers and have better shooting-quality. This is the truth - or at least my truth - and this we have to face. I do understand very well if our media-guys try to sell our hockey as positive as possible, this is important because our pro-hockey is also business and we need some good salesmen to a certain point but it’s also important to face reality and be self-critical. Our U20-team, with a good age-group, could just avoid relegation but what will come with the 98s and 99s worries me even more. I think it’s not negative thinking but just reality if I tell that our U18-team will be one of the “favorites” for relegation in April. It will be a really tough target not to go down to the Division I.

Especially Finland did make big progress with their program lately. Even without their three superstar players they easily did win the U18-tourney in Zuchwil and I feel quite a big gap between Finland and the Swiss right now. This was not the case a couple of years ago. Sweden is
there already since many years as are the US. Canada is always on top but they just showed up here in Helsinki with an average age-group at best. Russia seems to have some problems with their current youngsters but is always still good enough to upset anybody and then comes the Czechs. The Czechs are somewhere in between the top nations and the group of followers. To the group of followers there is quite a big gap and this gap is bigger than a couple of years ago. Slovakia, Switzerland, Denmark, Latvia, Germany, Belarus and Norway… and we, the Swiss, are right there in this group, unfortunately I can’t judge us better with our junior-program at this point. We have to produce better players, we have to work harder and smarter. Easy to tell, I do know that. What I don’t like in these conservative times is this upcoming jingoism. We tend to move back two steps if we just talk about Swiss coaches and expect from them to sing our anthem and probably more to come. Instead we have to hire the best coaches, what doesn’t mean that they are not allowed to be Swiss but nationality has nothing to do with being a good or bad coach or being good or bad educators. As Danmark shows us we do need the influence of the best educating hockey-programs from Scandinavia and also from the US. I have the feeling that our league-representatives have the tendency to become too powerful and the federation-programs suffer a bit from this. Too much league-power is narrow-minded thinking. Our hockey – and this includes our teams in the league – will pay a big price if we don’t channel enough reources, energy and respect to our national-team programs and the majority of this energy should be spent for the very young age-groups. 20 years old don’t learn as easy as 12 years old kids. We still need to learn a lot and the first step is to admit this and stay humble and respectful. We can be proud of what we did achieve with our program but now it’s time for the ambition to the next step and what we do right now is obviously not enough for this next step. Even worse, I see a slight decrease in our junior-hockey while others increase. The reality is the opposite of what our best hockey-salesmen tell us every week on TV and in other medias. This U20-WJC was a wake-up call and the upcoming U18-WJC might be even a shock. The good news is that people tend to change to the good if the suffering is just strong enough but I still hope that we change to the good without a relegation to Division I with our pro-, the U20- or the U18-team. Plus I definitely hope that our reaction to these factual and anticipated results is not “changing bodies and everything will be fine”. Our problems are fundamental. Please don’t get me wrong, this is critic on a high level, we do a lot of things really well in our program but obviously not well enough for the next step. We have to be ambitious enough trying to compete with Finland and the Czechs. I’m not happy to be part of the elevator-group-teams.

Not to forget:
Congrats to our boys and the coaching-staff for avoiding relegation. Such deadly games are always very difficult and our team stayed composed and showed solidarity; this I do respect!

Some comments about Swiss player-performances:
In general our team did work hard. I couldn’t see even small signs of lacking effort. Goaltending was a bit shaky sometimes, I would describe it as inconsistent. In the defense we managed to present some huge bodies (Siegenthaler, Kindschi, Heldner) but we lacked speed, mobility and quick enough thinking/acting under pressure. Siegenthaler still has to do the next step if he wants to become an NHLer. He did win a good amount of battles in the corners and along the walls but still has to work with his hand-skills, shot and sometimes his huge composure – what is basically an advantage – is simply too much and turns into lack of intensity. In the offense I was quite surprised that – opposite of what I did witnessed in the national championship – Denis Malgin was more noticeable than Pius Suter. I had huge expectations in smart Pius Suter and I still think he has an outside chance to get drafted as an overager but this WJC-U20 was simply not Suter’s tournament, he tried hard but not much happened, except in the last game where he scored a “hatty”. Malgin was quite good, excellent playmaking, smooth and fast skating but he still has to become tougher. Our highly touted powerforward Timo Meier showed why he was drafted that high (huge body, strong wrists with hard shots, powerful, dynamic skating, some hits) but overall I missed chemistry with his teammates and his playmaking is still a work in progress. Noah Rod played quite well. He plays a bit with a swagger, shows grit, gets his nose dirty, positions himself in dirty areas and also is not afraid to serve some physical grey-zone-actions. He plays a North American style of hockey, has some decent skills and can score. I give this second rounder a decent chance to play in the NHL if he continues to develop nicely. Our youngster, Nico Hischier, didn’t get too much icetime, I missed him on the powerplay. However, he showed flashes of his high-end playmaking with smart puck-moving.


 
Noah Rod
Not to forget:
Finland is a great, a real hockey-country. Huge crowds with an excellent understanding of the hockeygame and fair behaviour. Live broadcasts of the games in public TV. Excellent sportbars in the very nice Helsinki downtown area with the possibility to watch all the NHL- and WJC-U20-games again and again. Friendly taxi-drivers, good food (I love the salmon soup) and finally temperatures what reminded me really on winter ;-)





And here comes my very personal WJC U20 all-star team (selected after the quarterfinals):

Goalie:
Linus Söderström, SWE

Defenders:
Gustav Forsling, SWE
Zach Werensky, USA

Forwards:
Jesse Puljujärvi, FIN
Auston Matthews, USA
Patrik Laine, FIN

Honorable mentions in alphabetical order:
Sebastian Aho, F, FIN, Rasmus Asplund, F, SWE, Olli Juolevi, D, FIN, Adrian Kempe, F, SWE, Mitch Marner, F, CAN, Alexander Nylander, F, SWE, David Pastrnak, F, CZE, Ivan Provorov, D, RUS, Dylan Strome, F, CAN, Dmytro Timashov, F, SWE, Matthew Tkachuk, F, USA

Happy New Year to everybody!

Thomas Roost


Horgen, 3rd January 2016