What will happen until the tradedeadline in the Swiss Hockey League?

All lockoutstars did leave our country. A lot was already written and said about who will suffer most from this new situation and who will benefit. All these analyses are much too early in my eyes because we can do so just after the tradewindow will be closed. I do expect a lot of transfer-activities in the next couple of days/weeks and only after then a serious analyses about who will be good or not so good is possible. So I don’t go into that at this point but I try to speculate what is going to happen in terms of trades until the deadline. So here we go with my crystal ball... it was generously lent to me by Mike Shiva ;-)

                  Bye, bye John Tavares

Ambri-Piotta:

They prepare the playouts and in these games you need warriors but Serge Pelletier usually prefers skilled-players. So I guess he will try to find an offensive spark plug but this is not very clear.

SC Bern:

Bern will probably go for one more import-player, I guess it will be a forward. They surprisingly already hired Bednar in exchange for Danielsson. I don’t have the answer why they did do this, I have the strong feeling that they did lose patience with Danielsson too early. Maybe there was also a money-factor involved. If a media-report would be true that they did really speculate to open the gate for one more lockout-player with the depart of Danielsson: In this case I have to say that they didn’t play a smart percentage-game. The chance that the lockout ends around Christmas was always much much bigger than a canceled season.

HC Davos:

Davos will try to find two additional imports. It will be interesting to see what they will do. Usually Davos is extremely conservative with recruiting imports. They more often than not chose players they already know from earlier days so don’t expect completely unknown new names.

Fribourg-Gottéron:

Hans Kossmann is a guy who prefers to have blue-collar-type-players. He will go for a warrior in the type of a healthy and young J.P. Vigier. It’s typical for Kossmann that he did release a skilled-guy like Rosa.

Geneva:

They also have some room for improvement but Chris McSorley is difficult to read, he is a fox and likes to deke out the competition with sometimes surprising moves. To be honest: I have no idea what he is planning to do.

Kloten-Flyers:

They actually could use a complete rebuild of their import-players and you never know what is going to happen in this „officially“ tight budget team with an ambitious and very wealthy team-owner. With just average import-players Kloten would be immediately one of the very serious contenders. So, what will they do? They will hire somebody, they have a new sporting-director and he wants to run up his first flag. They will hire a business-class import-player (1st-class is not possible, they play now in the NHL or some of them in the KHL) but business-class is pretty good for our league and they will find the money for it, actually they don’t have to find it, they have it.

Langnau Tigers:

Langnau also will do something on the import-market. Although their normal imports started to play better lately they definitely have to prepare for the „war“ against relegation and also the Tigers have a new sporting-director and also he will run up his first flag. They lack skills in Langnau but in the relegation-war they need fighters, so I guess that Köbi Kölliker will go for a warrior.

HC Lugano:

Also Lugano did make a surprising move. Larry Huras is also known as a strong believer in blue-collar-guys but then he did hire Pavel Rosa and did release Jaroslav Bednar. Probably only he can explain this move. My prediction: Another blue-collar-guy in the mold of Brett McLean will be hired from the HC Lugano.

Rapperswil-Jona Lakers:

I guess they will go for an additional import-defender, type of defensive defenseman or two-way-defenseman. They will find one, the market-competition for a smart defensive d-man is not very big, for whatever reason...

                       Radoslav Suchy

EV Zug:

Zug will probably go for one forward and one dman but it’s also possible that they will hold on to the „best player available“ strategy. There are even rumors that they might lose Omark to the NHL but probably he will stay here at least for the rest of this season. Actually it’s not very easy to read what they will do and whatever they do – even if they act very wise and lucky with the import-player-market: They never can fill the hole of losing the trio of Diaz/Zetterberg/Brunner but they are already pretty safe for the Playoffs.

ZSC Lions:

Actually the Lions should go for three new import-players but because of budget-restrictions they will most probably go „only“ for two. We shouldn’t forget that Roman Wick was hired unexpectedly outside the basic budget-planning, so even the Lions probably have some budget-problems in this season. I do expect two new import-forwards. It will be not easy to find a player in the mold of the Jeff Tambellini version 11/12. But it will be easy to find upgrades to the nonexisting Brulé and rather easy to find a better one than Lashoff. I also do strongly expect the signing of Robert Nilsson – what will be a huge signing for the ZSC-Lions with great potential, especially on the Powerplay – but... Robert still suffers from some lingering concussion-effects. Doctors in Russia cleared him to play but he has to be patient and careful, so... don’t be surprised if Robert Nilsson „only“ will play for the ZSC Lions not before summer, he will rest his headache until then and I guess this is a wise decision and Gerry Büsser will support this.

                    Robert Nilsson likes the city of Zurich, right he is...

Zurich, 7^th January 2013                                                ImportTradePredictionsSWI070113.docx