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
