Switzerland arrived in the NHL

After long years of evaluating, scouting and sometimes even recommending Swiss players to the NHL I often had to challenge the following question: „How many Swiss play in the NHL“? For too many years my answer had to be: None. This fact, this result, didn’t reflect the real strength of the Swiss hockey program. NHL-organizations were too reluctant, maybe too conservative in terms of drafting Swiss players. A similar result one could find in all the lists of the CHL-Import-drafts, just very few players from Switzerland did find their way onto these lists. This was the time when Switzerland established itself as a more or less solid A-Pool-Hockey-nation on all age-groups.

Today it’s a different world. Some of our players established themselves as solid NHLers (Mark Streit, Roman Josi, Jonas Hiller). Sven Baertschi, CGY, will follow and also Nino Niederreiter, MIN is on the verge of becoming a NHL-regular. Switzerland did win a silver-medal at the last World Championships and more and more players are drafted in the NHL-entry-draft and the CHL-import-draft. In addition NHL-franchises started to become interested in also older players who might have a chance to play in the NHL, e.g. Damien Brunner. My impression is that after many years of paying not enough attention to Swiss players it’s now the opposite. Right now I smell a tendency that the Swiss players might be a bit overrated.

How good is Swiss hockey today?

Swiss hockey did take a huge step approx. 15 years ago. A good program and the necessary money did complement each other and so the Swiss managed to improve from an outsider to a world-ranking 8-12 nation. This was followed by confirming this step more or less in all future years. The world-ranking 8-12 became stable. What was missing is the next step, narrowing the gap to the worlds best. In the defensive play without the puck, most of the Swiss junior national teams and the senior national team became world-class. In terms of skating-mobility a lot Swiss players could play with the best. The main differences were – and still are - obviously in the shot-quality, pass-quality, puck-control and stickhandling-skills-area, plus stability on the skates. The Swiss didn’t improve anymore but also didn’t regress. Indirectly they did improve but not because of their own strength it was more because the Czech and Slovak junior-programs did regress and so the Swiss could catch up. The Swiss did overtake the Slovaks on junior-level and closed the gap to the Czechs but the difference to the worlds best juniors in Canada, Sweden and the USA remained the same. Recently the Swiss had some astonishing results on senior and junior-level with wins against the very best in the world. It’s easy to tell that this was the next step but I tell you “not so fast”.  Individually one can still see all the above mentioned weaknesses compared to the worlds best and now comes the time when the Swiss have to confirm these astonishing results. The Swiss have to resist the unrealistic expectations of good parts of the Swiss media. Many expect now to play always for a medal and these are dangerous tendencies. “Success leads to handicapped learning” and the Swiss might fall into this trap. Still: They can be proud for what they did achieve recently but should think about the next big step in the junior-programs so that one fine day it will be a realistic expectation to play for the medals tournament by tournament. What is missing in the program are one or two protagonists of e.g. the very successful Swedish or US-program with the target to make our hockey-educators even better than they are now. They should be hired by the Swiss hockey-federation and their target should be to improve the quality of the Swiss hockey-educators. Don’t get me wrong: The actual level of the Swiss hockey-educators is far from bad but there is still significant room to improve and the Swiss should try to improve and open up a bit their hockey-education-horizons and then even better things will come!

What Swiss names will be noticed in the near future in terms of NHL- or CHL-drafts?

The Swiss have a very strong age-group born 97! Names like Denis Malgin, F, Jonas Siegenthaler, D,  Auguste Impose, F, Roger Karrer, D, Fabian Haberstich, F, Nathan Marchon, F are players who can make a difference even in international competitions. Also for the 2015-NHL-draft late 96-born 6.07 d-man Colin Fontana will be in the spotlight. For the upcoming NHL-draft 2014 I expect from 96 born Kevin Fiala, F, that he will be an early-round-pick. He is polishing his game in the world-famous HV71 talent-pool in Sweden. Also 95 born forward Fabio Högger is very talented but he was unlucky in his draftyear with a longterm concussion, so he got overlooked. The 98s don’t look as strong as the 97s at this point but it’s too early to judge definitely.

From the older players who might have a chance for some sort of NHL-contract in the near future I point to Luca Cunti, F, (former Tampa Bay Lightning draft-pick) and Denis Hollenstein, F. From the already drafted but not yet in NA playing prospects I expect good careers from Christoph Bertschy (Minnesota Wild) and Joel Vermin (Tampa Bay Lightning). Also goalie Reto Berra (Calgary Flames) has a good chance to become a positive surprise already in his first season in NA.

In general Swiss hockey is very healthy. A good – but no great – junior-program, huge crowds in the arenas, attractive, open, fast-paced, offensive playing style in a lot of teams of the pro-league. The entertainment-level of the Swiss pro-league is very good. In addition: Quite good money in the league and the sport of hockey is popular in all three language-parts of Switzerland.

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Horgen, 9^th September 2013 / Thomas Roost                                                                                   Switzerland arrived in the NHL.docx