Hot seats for coaches in the Swiss league

When I talk with hockey people from all over the world, I notice that our Swiss league has a reputation that no another league has: The reputation of a “hire and fire league” when it comes to coaches.

In business, the US-culture dominates the headlines when experts criticize a so-called “hire and fire mentality.” If “puck heads” are talking about a “hire and fire mentality,” they very soon point fingers to our hockey league. I don’t want to go into this statistically; I don’t know whether this reputation is based on facts and figures. But it is a fact that we have this reputation: If you are a coach and you want to be on a hot seat, go to Switzerland. I believe that this “hire and fire habit” is partly responsible for the stupid spending of large sums of money.

Firing coaches when they have valid contracts is more often than not based on pure emotions and is not really a rational decision. The problem is also that you will always find examples in this discussion that make you believe that my thesis is wrong. But… there are simply more examples indicating that I’m not so wrong:

Here we go:

In the Swiss national team, we have had a handful of head coaches with completely different personalities since Ralph Krueger. Not signing a new contract, getting fired, staying put… we have witnessed a lot of different scenarios with all of these guys… but they all have something in common: The results have been more or less the same. Once an over performance (silver-medal), most of the time a very close quarterfinal-qualification or a very close quarterfinal-miss – aka normal performance – and once or twice a clear quarterfinal-miss (underperformance). The long-term result shows us where we are at in this hockey-landscape. And for all of these results, the coach did not matter.

Approximately one year ago, HC Lugano, HC Ambrì-Piotta, and the Swiss national team changed their respective coaches and I probably criticized this –in my eyes– premature behavior. Six months ago, I was criticized when people pointed to the spectacular improvement of Lugano and Ambrì and the fresh euphoria for our national team. But what about now… just twelve months after these changes? HC Lugano is once again underperforming compared to what their individual skills should bring to the table. In Ambrì, we have witnessed a “scapegoat” Laporte, “magic-man” Kossmann and now a “scapegoat” once again, named….yes, you name it: Kossmann ;-) In Bern, we have witnessed a chameleon to scapegoat/magic-man story told by one single person, Lars Leuenberger, and in the Swiss national team, the euphoria is long gone and slowly but steadily we start to discuss our possibilities more in a more realistic way.

But what about the Heinz Ehlers/ Scott Beattie-story in Langnau? Right now, the SCL Tigers look like geniuses because of this change. But… could it be, that the SCL Tigers  just have a phase of underperforming with Beattie and now with Ehlers, they are over performing and the “normal-performance”  might come in the second-half of the season? By the way… the SCL Tigers' winning streak started with a win against EHC Kloten…. still with Beattie, you have to be fair… What about Lausanne without Ehlers? Have they collapsed or are they really playing worse than before or the same, or even better?

In business, there usually is some sort of yearly review for top managers who have to take decisions, similar to a head coach. There they can see whether they reached their targets. The targets have to be more or less realistic and if the manager reaches them, he might get a bonus by the end of the year. If he fails, there will be talks about why he has failed, new targets will be adjusted and, by the end of the second year, there will be another review of what has been achieved and what missed. If a manager fails for the second year in a row, he might be fired, especially in a US-oriented company. In a Swiss company, on the other hand, he probably “only” gets fired if he misses three times in a row. In Swiss hockey, it surprisingly doesn’t work like this. The “mecano” usually goes as follows: Teams set a goal for the season – often an unrealistic one… – the season starts and if a team in the first couple of weeks or months under- or overperforms, they start to act foolishly in terms of either firing the coach or extending an already existing contract. They usually do not wait until the end of a season but get fooled by a 10 game losing- or winning-streak.

Another phenomenon in our culture of coaches is the discussion about the nationality. If Finland wins a championship, all of sudden a lot of teams want to have a Finnish coach and so on. Some people think that Swiss coaches are basically better or worse than others, so they either only hire a Swiss coach or they never hire a Swiss one. In business, I had CEOs from all over the world, and, at this point, my boss is from Lebanon, and I have had male and female CEOs. Nobody has ever cared about nationality or gender; it’s just professional that you try to find the best-qualified CEO. All of them always get reviewed by their results at the end of the year and if they don’t deliver within two or three years, they have to leave…. But nobody of them has to leave if they don’t deliver within two or three months and  nobody gets a contract extension or a salary raise after only two or three months. By the way: What about the possibility of an e.g. female Asian head coach or team manager in our professional hockey league? Any rational arguments against it?

The Swiss behavior in terms of hockey coaches is really irritating. A country with a general reputation for stability, reliability, slow moving and stable laws is doing unbelievably nervous, emotional, choleric, and sometimes even slapstick-like hockey-coaching business.

This means:

I hereby criticize firing Serge Pelletier, Benoît Laporte, Patrick Fischer, Hans Kossmann. Moreover, I also criticize the unnecessary early contract extensions for Patrick Fischer (last season), Doug Shedden, and now Pekka Tirkkonen. And, probably, I forgot many more examples. Yes, I indeed criticize the nervous, emotional and premature judging of coaches.

Coming to an end, I want to present two stories that will show how the effect when changing a coach will usually work:

Once upon a time, there was a popular and sympathetic low-budget team in the NLA. This team had a coach who managed to achieve a surprising playoff berth. The next season also started well and so the coach got the chance to become head coach of the Swiss national team and the low-budget team had to find a suitable replacement. Well, the new coach arrived and failed completely: a terrible losing streak ended with a dead-last place by the end of the season. Of course, this low-budget team then fired said coach and found the coach of their dreams and started enthusiastically into the new season. This new coach was really successful and everybody hung on his every word to listen to his magic. Our low- budget team very soon found itself in a solid playoff position and everybody praised the coach and the new players. Sadly enough, one fine day, this coach disappeared because of a huge offer from the KHL, so our low-budget-team had to find another coach again. Of course, it was very difficult to find a good one in the middle of the season and so it surprised nobody that this new coach couldn’t match the results of his predecessor. Even worse, the new coach lost close to 10 games in a row. Everybody cried and prayed that either the new national team coach or the Magic-Man – who is now in the KHL – will come back.

The second story comes from a low-budget team in the NLB. This team was built with mostly amateur players and lead by a not very experienced young coach, a famous former player and… surprise, surprise…. This team started to win game by game until they climbed nearly the top of the ranking. All strategies, all tactics, all timeouts, and all words from this coach paid off, a real miracle-man. He lifted a low-quality team up to new wuthering heights. The media started to publish home stories about this “Mr. Magic” and all of this was proof for how much influence a good coach can have for success. Of course, the NLA teams started to notice Mr. Magic and, suddenly, a top-league team hired him mid-October. The poor second division low-budget team had to find a coach in the middle of the season and finally found one. Of course, they couldn’t find a “Mr. Magic” again because those are as rare as diamonds. So, to no one’s surprise, they started to lose, 5 games, 7 games 10 games in a row or whatever.

These two stories indicate us how important and how dramatic changing a coach usually will be. The only problem with these stories is… they are just fairy-tales ;-) 

Any similarities with true events would be purely accidental ;-).

Horgen, 14th November 2016 / Thomas Roost

Swiss NHL players - what their early performances mean

At this point of every hockey-season - and in every league - the most judging mistakes are taken and this has some sort of logic: We desperately did wait for the beginning of the season. We did speculate, predict and judge but we didn’t have facts and figures. Then the season starts, we have some figures and now we get trapped with these early stats… because we don’t have others, we just have them… wait a minute… we also have historical figures and tend to forget about them. It’s a dangerous trap, judging the hockey-ongoing if you start to analyze after only a couple of weeks into the season. Just around 10% of the NHL-season is played and we already tend to “know” why the Habs, the Oilers, Detroit and Minnie are that good and why Dallas, Nashville, LA and the Ducks are so bad or rather bad. HUGE mistakes. We start to hype players because of two or three “given nights” and we point fingers to proven goal-scorers because they haven’t really scored yet. Rest assured that historical player-hockey-stats are a pretty consistent and reliable source for predicting the future. Stay patient, composed and relaxed, especially with younger players who scored 25-30 goals in recent seasons. As sure as day follows night their goals will come, don’t panic. Will the Oilers and the Habs keep their winning-pace? Of course not, they are definitely over-performing right now. Is Nashville and Dallas that bad?

No, of course not, they are just under-performing and will come along nicely. Every team has over-performing, normal performing and underperforming phases during a loooong season. If teams start with an under- or over-performing phase we tend to vastly overrate these results and the coaches of the under-performing teams are in danger, especially in the Swiss league… who – from an international observer point of view – has the reputation of being one of the most aggressive “coaching hire- and fire-leagues” worldwide… ;-)

So, coming to the point: What does all this mean for our Swiss NHL-players and especially for the rookies? It means not much for players like Josi, Niederreiter and Streit, our “proven commodities”, it’s more or less clear that Josi will slightly improve, Niederreiter is just on his expected pace and Streit is a bit over-performing at this point. In the case of Josi we can see that the basically overrated +/-stat is at this point of a season even vastly overrated, so just don’t even care a bit about +/- figures that early in a season… if at all…

Coming now finally to the real point of this column: What does all this mean for our Swiss NHL-rookies: On the contrary to what I did tell above their early season performances mean a lot and their according performances (watch their stats and ice-times) are worrying for Malgin and Bärtschi and also to a certain degree to Fiala and Bertschy. The big difference between to what I did tell about Josi and Niederreiter is there are no historical NHL-data existing about Malgin, Fiala and Bertschy… So, decision-takers will watch very carefully what they bring to the table early on in their careers, in their rookie-season and if they don’t score like Matthews, Nylander or Laine… don’t overrate the early praise of our young Swiss players. In addition nobody of our Swiss rookies is a top3-overall draftpick… well this is a very dangerous situation for them. Malgin’s stats and ice-time doesn’t indicate that he is not under high-pressure to produce very soon. To a certain extent this is also true for Kevin Fiala. They might have a bit more patience with him because he scored two goals in one game and was a pretty high draft-pick. What about Baertschi in Vancouver? He failed in Calgary, performed quite well early on in Vancouver but now has a really slow start into the new season. He is also in the danger-zone. Christophe Bertschy in Minnesota was close to make the team but got cut in the last minute because they hired Pulkkinen from waivers. Pulkkinen failed so far, was sent down to the minors but it was not Bertschy who succeeded in this scenario, it was Eriksson-Ek and he cashed in early on. So, this is also not a really promising scenario for Christophe Bertschy.

To make the long story short: The small early hype about Malgin and Fiala is fading away and this goes faster than what might be fair. Baertschi is on the verge of his NHL-career in these weeks to come. Andrighetto, Kukan, Vermin, Bertschy are in the minors. This is not the NHL-start of the season what we – from the Swiss point of view – did wish will happen. Reality is sometimes brutal and for lower tier rookies it takes sometimes two or three good or bad weeks what more or less decides about their future NHL-careers. It’s also reality that there are tons so similar quality prospects like the abovementioned who are waiting for their chances to shine and the one and the other will be lucky enough to succeed. So, yes, it’s time to worry from the Swiss point of view, today’s truth doesn’t look really bright but let’s stay optimistic: Today’s “truth” is not tomorrow’s truth and tomorrow’s truth is not the truth of the day after tomorrow. The future of most players is unpredictable to a certain extent, so let’s hope for the best and we all cross fingers for Andrighetto, Kukan, Malgin, Meier, Baertschi, Bertschy, Fiala and many more.

Horgen, 30th October 2016 / Thomas Roost          

Babcock, Del Curto, Rönnberg, Huras or Mr.Nobody? - How to choose a head coach

Whenever a team in Switzerland is looking for a new head coach, there is always a huge discussion about who should get this job. It seems like this decision would influence the club’s future more than the budget, the roster, and the (hopefully existing) basic club-philosophy. 

And that’s why I think that these discussions are a bit overrated. Digging a bit deeper, I notice that we have just a small number of Swiss coaches in our league. Definitely, a too small number of Swiss coaches when I consider the according theoretical probabilities in a professional evaluation. There seems to be some sort of weird aversion towards Swiss coaches. On the other hand, I also notice that some people believe having a Swiss passport should be one of the most important assets in the job profile.

I really have issues with the fact that we have just five out of 24 Swiss head-coaches in our two professional leagues. On the other hand, I have the same issue whenever I hear that being a Swiss citizen should be a “must have“ asset in a head coach's profile. I also notice that the Swiss leagues follow one of our society’s habits... we are “Recycling World Champions” and we also hold this title when it comes to recycling hockey-coaches. My respected Larry Huras and HC Fribourg-Gottéron may forgive me this hint ;-)

In professional international recruiting-processes, it has been a standard for ages that the personality and not the nationality should be important. The basics are, of course, professional knowledge and skills.

So what should we try to look for in a head coach? Trying to answer this question, I will ask more than 40 questions beforehand.

Shall we go with the most expensive coach on this planet, Mike Babcock, because there must be a reason why he is that expensive? Didn’t he win a lot of titles in the NHL and with the Canadian National Team? Does anybody really know more about hockey than him? But... did he ever win with a low- or at least average team roster? Could he find out and adapt to our players’ mentality? What about his player-development skills?

Ok, let’s turn the page: Arno Del Curto. Did any other coach stay with the same team for as long as he did? Does any other team play with such an attractive, fast style as Del Curto’s teams? Didn’t he win some championships? Isn’t he a media-darling which could include additional marketing potential? But... did he ever win with a low-budget team? How many overachieving seasons did he have with Davos? How many skaters who were coached by Del Curto are now NHL-players or "at least" star players in the Swiss national team? Is he maybe overrated? 

Thus far we have some positive and negative aspects of Babcock and Del Curto. Let’s move on to Roger Rönnberg. Isn’t he one of the builders of the highest respected Swedish development program? Is he not the one who successfully develops young players again and again? Isn’t he the one who made the proud and brave statement that Swedish players are more skilled and better educated than Canadians and that’s why he thinks that Sweden will likely beat Canada when the two teams face each other? Is this a bold and brave or a stupid, naïve, and arrogant statement? Is he the right coach for a professional team or maybe better suited as a sporting director or junior coach? 

Should there be a completely different profile for a coach of a professional team on the one hand and a junior coach on the other hand? Is a perfect bench-coach the one who tries to win the next games no matter what? And is a good junior coach just interested in improving the overall level of his players in the long-term and doesn’t care enough about winning or losing the next game?

What about Larry Huras? Didn’t he win championships with different teams? Isn’t he an attractive entertainer before, during, and after the games? Is it maybe true that he knows how to win championships? But... when did he win his last championship? What are his references with his recent teams in Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden? Isn’t he mainly just a „Ra-Ra-Rah-coach“ who is selling himself as something he is not? Does he really know how to win championships? Is there, at all, just one single human being on this planet who really knows how to win championships or isn’t this one of the weirdest “hockey-wisdoms”?

What about Mr. Nobody? Why are there countless examples in professional team sports when,out of emergency, a Mr. Nobody took over a spectacular pro-team and succeeded? Is Mr. Nobody not more motivated to do a great job and work harder because he knows: “This is my lifetime chance?” Isn’t it true that there are a lot of still unknown high-quality coaches in the world of hockey? Isn’t it true that players win games and coaches don’t? Isn’t it true that Mr. Nobody-coaches are on average significantly less expensive than “star-coaches” and wouldn’t it be more fruitful to spend this saved money for, for instance, a high-calibre import-player or other assets in the supporting cast? Does a famous coach really know how to win championships and a no-name coach doesn’t? Was not every “big-name-coach” a “no-name-coach” when he started his coaching career? But... do players trust a Mr. Nobody? Isn’t the pressure of the media more brutal to a Mr. Nobody if the team does not immediately do well? Do you sell enough tickets with a Mr. Nobody? Do you unnecessarily risk your job as sporting director if you hire a Mr. Nobody-bench coach?

With all my questions I just want to point to the fact that it’s not easy to choose the right coach. There are advantages and disadvantages in all scenarios, but, in the very end, you have to make a decision. I don’t want to leave you without presenting my personal opinion. But before I do so,  I want to let you know that, of course, all these decisions are always influenced by the context such as the current situation of a team (rebuild-process, contender, in danger to become relegated and so on). But basically, in the big picture, with the hat of a team president, a CEO or a sporting director on my head, I would act as follows in European leagues:

Hire a world-class coach for your development program, a real teacher who doesn’t need the media spotlight for his ego plus a more or less no-name bench coach for your pro-team with an additional smart assistant coach plus a bright, young, and enthusiastic analytic-head.

The junior coach could easily have the bigger salary than the no-name bench coach of the main team. I guess that, in the very end, the overall payroll wouldn’t be bigger than a team who hires a famous head coach.

To add some more questions:

Is this scenario just a naïve theoretical simulation? Or could it be the beginning of a new era? Do we maybe just need the one team who will be brave and innovative enough to break new ground? But… would it still be better to stay on proven paths and try to recycle Kent Ruhnke, Hans Zach, or Barry Melrose? We definitely have more questions than answers. Critical and smart brains should have more of these questions about life in general. Coming to an end, I really want to point out once again: To choose the one or the other coach should be always based on his personality and never his passport.

Thomas Roost / 11th October 2016

Hockey Season 15/16 - One Last Thing... ;-)

As the 2015-16 season is slowly coming to an end even in North America, our columnist Thomas Roost decided to look back and write "one last thing" about this memorable season. (Ok, it’s one last thing plus 10… ;-) ) 

1. Skills, speed, creativity, grit, and offense beat trapping, destructive defense, and no-risk-strategies. To win, you don’t need to slow down or trap the game anymore. Examples: Pittsburgh Penguins, San Jose Sharks, Tampa Bay Lightning, SC Bern, and HC Lugano

2. Big data is finally entering hockey analytics and charismatic old-school hockey populists are dying out. Examples: Most NHL-teams hired analysts in various positions… and, in my opinion, it won’t be long until some of these guys will be general managers of NHL teams.

3. These days, a modern hockey team is not divided into two offensive, point-producing lines and two checking lines A perfect modern hockey team has twelve skilled, speedy, gritty, smart and reliable forwards, and eight mobile, puck-skilled, smart and composed defensemen. Examples (by tendency): Tampa Bay Lightning, Pittsburgh Penguins, San Jose Sharks

4. The size factor in skaters is fading away to a certain point. Examples: The Pittsburgh Penguins are just the 25th biggest team in the NHL out of 30. SC Bernwon the Swiss championship with the second smallest team overall.

5. The size factor in goalies is becoming more important: Hockey-goalies on an international level, which are shorter than 6.02 ft (188cm), are disappearing. Example: Nowadays, NHL-teams seldom draft goalies smaller than 6.03 (190cm) .

6. Quite often in the playoffs, unexpected things happen. Examples: In the NHL, the number 4 and 11 are facing each other in the Stanley-Cup-Final, and in the Swiss league, it was number 5 vs number 8 in the final

7. The importance of high-end goalies might still be a bit overrated. Examples: No goalie-expert would have predicted that in this year’s Stanley-Cup-Final, the (more or less) rookies Martin Jones and Matt Murray would face each other. SC Bern became champion with solid but not high-end goaltending

8. High-end 18-year-old players can dominate good level pro-leagues. Examples: Patrik Laine in Finland and Auston Matthews in Switzerland

9. The top 6-hockey-nations widened the gap between them and the group of followers. Examples: Various international tournaments on both the senior- and junior-level.

10. It’s possible to win the Stanley-Cup without defender-depth. Examples: Pittsburgh Penguins, San Jose Sharks

But then again:

There is simply no “best way” to play hockey, there is no “perfect way” to build a hockey team because next season, some of these ten points might have already changed … ;-)

And one last thing:

Unfortunately, it’s not impossible that in the 2016 NHL-Entry-draft, neither a Swiss nor a German player will be drafted. I still hope for the one or the other surprise but…. this is indeed alarming!

Cheerio, enjoy the sun, the barbecue, enjoy the Euro2016-soccer-tournament (or football tournament, if you like) and the Olympics in Rio. I definitely will… but I will most definitely miss hockey.

NHL Draft - Some knowledge and some nuggets of wisdom

In just a few days from now, the 2016 NHL Draft will be history. In the days, hours and minutes leading up to the draft – or even during the draft – there are usually hectic speculations, rumors, and real trade offers.

Time to look a bit deeper into the not exact science of judging the value of possible assets in trade talks and the, also, not exact science of predicting the career of talents.

Despite the fact that drafting is an inexact science at best, draft rights and picks are treated like known quantities and qualities in trade talks. The real value of these assets, however, is rarely discussed in concrete terms. Everybody seems to know that a first-round pick is worth more than later round picks. But the interesting question is: how much more are they worth? Some data analyses will help to answer this question.

The analyses show us that the clearly highest value in NHL draft picks lies in the overall top three selections; the largest drop-off in pick value lies between picks three and four. Between picks four and fifteen, there is not a big difference; these picks are worth roughly a bit more than 33% of a 1-3 overall selection.

A sixth-overall pick is more or less twice as valuable as a 30th overall selection. The analyses also show that late first-round picks are just a little bit more valuable than 2nd- or 3rd-round picks.

This means the difference in value between a first-round-pick of a contending team and a 2nd- or 3rd-round pick is significantly smaller than the difference between a late first-round-pick and a top-five-pick of the same round.

So the idea of “quantity over quality” in NHL-drafts in terms of collecting a couple of 2nd- and 3rd-round picks compared to holding on to a late-first rounder is probably a good idea. In the end, the analyses show that, by tendency, the value of middle- and late 1st-round-picks are a bit overrated and the value of 2nd- and later-round picks might be a bit underrated.

I already mentioned more than once that hockey scouting is not an exact science but we still have to try finding some tools to project the success expectancy of NHL-prospects. Some analysts found that the best predictor of future NHL-production is the amount of primary points per game played in the draft year. They compared these numbers with comparable players in their draft year and, of course, there is much more to it (era, league-adjustments, marginal goals by league and so on).

But with this model, the chance of predicting future NHL-success of prospects is clearly higher than without such a model.

As a concrete example, I can present our Swiss forward Timo Meier: The analysts found a group of 43 players with comparable numbers in their draft year. Of those 43, 24 became successful NHL players (NHL-success is determined by them playing 200 NHL games or more). The result shows that Timo Meier’s chance of becoming a successful NHL-player is 55.8% and his projected NHL points per game played will be 0.57. Although this system is helpful it’s important not to fully rely on it; it’s an additional tool, not more and not less.

Thank you to Stephen Burtch and Zac Urback for their great insights.

Horgen, 20th June 2016

IIHF Worlds 2016 / A resumé plus some thoughts about team Switzerland

Even before the medal ceremony at this year's World Championship in Russia, our columnist Thomas Roost provides you with ten general observations about international hockey plus five Swiss-specific 

I write this résumé before the semi-finals. I guess all four semi-finalists performed pretty well, so there is no need to wait for some more observations until the very end. I will look at some overall tendencies but will also have some specific comments on team Switzerland.

What did this World Championship show us?

1. Except for Russia, the top nations didn’t show up with high-end rosters. Too many potential player-additions were missing and the World Cup of Hockey next September is probably a reason for that.

2. Although most top-nations did show up with B- or even C-rosters (Sweden), all of these top nation-teams managed more or less easily to qualify for the quarterfinals. When I look a bit deeper – means at the probable and not only at the real results in all these games - and I also take into consideration the latest U20- and U18-developments - I come to the conclusion that the gap between the top-six nations and the growing next group (rankings 7-14) widened up again. Not very long ago the teams ranked 4-6 were not that far away from this group but now I notice that the best teams of the 7-14 group are more or less stagnating in their attempts to improve further.

3. On the very top, I start to notice a growing “traffic jam.” Times are long gone when Canada and Russia were ahead of everybody. Sweden and the US improved significantly in the past 10 years and if they all can bring their best players to a tourney – e.g. the September 2016 World Cup – it’s impossible now to make out a favorite when they play each other.

4. But stop, not so fast, I see even more traffic at the very top: Finland gained significant ground to these top 4 nations, in 2016 they are U20- and U18-World Champions plus now, one of the semi-finalists in the senior World Championship. The improvement of Finnish hockey from an already high-level to top-level is indeed impressive! I also notice some rebound-signs in Czechian hockey. They are not on the Finnish level quite yet in terms of player development, but after some painful years, it seems to go into the right direction again in this traditional hockey powerhouse-country.

Sebastian Aho

5. Some extremely young guns impressed a lot in this World Championship. The epic duel between the two 18-year-olds Auston Matthews and Patrik Laine was one of the highlights, plus, we could witness the unbelievable puck-carrying speed of Connor McDavid and the great potential of Noah Hanifin, Nikolaj Ehlers, Leon Draisaitl, Sebastian Aho, Dylan Larkin, Sasha Barkov, and David Pastrnak, just to name a few. This World Championship was a showcase of the next wave of high-end hockey players, future NHL-stars, and superstars.

6. I couldn’t see a really new trend in terms of game plans, strategies, systems, and so on. I feel that the NHL is still the trendsetter in hockey and there we have the Tampa Bay Lightning – as I already mentioned in an earlier column - with the tendency to stay away from typical scoring and checking lines and stay away of one-dimensional offensive or defensive defensemen. In the future, one needs to have skilled, fast, mobile, gritty top players in all four units in offense and defense.

7. Coming back to the World Championship: I did witness some great goaltending here and there in certain games, but maybe not a real high-end goaltender, although the Finnish duo was very solid and Czechian late bloomer with a lion-heart, Dominik Furch, confirms once more that goalies can also develop at an older age. Furch appeared more or less out of the blue one or two years ago and now he is probably on the NHL-radar.

8. Russia, the “Big Red and sometimes moody Machine”. This “Red Machine” confirmed that if the machine is amused it’s simply a great pleasure to watch it play. Tic-tac-toe – moves, dekes, puck-control and this at high-speed and under constant pressure from not that weak opponents. The beauty of the game of hockey! Respect!

9. The US showed up with a very young squad, younger than 23 years old on average and still quite competitive. They do a lot of things the right way in their NTDP development program…

10. The chasing middle of the pack group of nations is growing. Not long ago, it was Slovakia, Switzerland, Germany, and Latvia. Nowadays, we also have Denmark, Norway and Belarus and also the relegated nations never go home empty handed (Hungary won their first game in the top division, Kazakhstan beat SUI and last year, Austria got relegated although they won five points altogether). So, not only the group of nations at the very top is growing, but also the group of followers… but as I told before: In my opinion, the gap between these two groups widened up again, at least a bit. 

What about Switzerland?

1. Switzerland performed more or less as expected. Maybe the one or the other additional point would have been possible, but also fewer points and the danger of relegation were not that far away.

2. It looks like the silver medal in 2013 was full of poison because it raised expectations to unrealistic heights and this unnecessary pressure still haunts us.

3. Swiss hockey is in a stagnation phase and finds itself in the middle of the pack group ranked 7-12. And when I look into the future and analyze our U20- and U18-teams, there is no reason to assume that there is much improvement on the horizon. With the players we have, it’s naive to expect more than a 50% chance of a quarter-final-qualification- in the near future. (None of our players in this WC was younger than 23…). Just look at the results of the past five or ten years and accept where our hockey is really ranked. Dreaming is allowed but I guess it will cause more nightmares sweet-dreams…

4. This World Championship also confirmed that there is a quite significant gap regarding quality between our NHL and NLA players. I guess some people indeed overrate the quality of our league because it’s a high entertaining league. However, when we look at the performances of our best NLA players here at this World Championship, we have to admit that all of them are far away from being considered a WC all-star. However, the performances of Nino Niederreiter and Sven Andrighetto made me very happy! Swiss hockey is not bad at all and we have some decent and even a handful of good players, but we have to be confident enough to judge us realistically and not getting trapped with cheap positive thinking-rhetoric. Unrealistic positive thinking is as bad and dangerous as negative thinking. Focused thinking is what we need.

Nino Niederreiter

5. Our common focus, energy, and brainpower should be channeled into producing more and better players. But sad enough, for such an act of solidarity and collaboration, our “suffering” is not big enough yet. This means we are still talking way too much about coaches and players who should have played or should not have played etc. Of course, all these details are very important as well, but rest assured: A concentrated, critical, transparent, open-minded and passionate round-table discussion of all Swiss “hockey-brains” with the target to take national actions to further improve our player-development and to raise the number of kids who want to play hockey would be more fruitful. 

Baar, 22nd May 1960 / Thomas Roost

THE FOOL DOTH THINK HE IS WISE, BUT THE WISE MAN KNOWS HIMSELF TO BE A FOOL.

It’s a common habit that losers try to copy winners. “The winners did everything right,” is a very common assumption – although it’s pretty stupid to believe in this ;-).

So, let’s have a look at the four semi-finalists in the NHL. What are they doing differently than others? They will set the new trends in hockey because they won and we – maybe wrongly – assume that they will also win in the future with the same ingredients.

One of the “wisdoms” is that you have to be a big sized team to be successful in the NHL and yes: If you look at the St. Louis Blues they have with 187.5cm on average the second tallest team in the NHL, so the Blues are the “proof” that you have to have especially tall guys in your team. But wait, not so fast, there is a small group of “renegades” telling that you easily can win with a short team and yes: Look at another semi-finalist, the Pittsburgh Penguins: on average, they are nearly 3cm smaller in size than the Blues and just the NHL’s No. 25 in this aspect. Hmmm… the fact is that the 2nd tallest, then No. 13, 16 and 25 are the semi-finalists. So, the unspectacular truth is: One can’t assume that you have to be a tall or short sized to be successful. By the way, the tallest (Arizona Coyotes) and the shortest team (New Jersey Devils) both did not manage to catch a playoff spot…

Ok, let’s turn the page. To win in the NHL, you need to have muscles and weight and the proof for this are the San Jose Sharks and the St. Louis Blues; they both rank 5th and 6th in terms of weight. Their bodies have an average weight of more than 93kg. But… I guess…. You know it already: not so fast! We have also the Tampa Bay Lightning with 90.6 kg (ranked 22nd) and the Pittsburgh Penguins, 3rd last in this ranking with an average weight of “only” 89kgs. Hmmm…

Well, bingo, I have the answer! You need to be an experienced team to win in the NHL. Others will tell you: No, I don’t believe in this, I guess you need to have a young team to succeed. Young teams have much more energy than old teams. You need to be young and energetic.  The –once again–unspectacular truth is that, on the one hand, you have the San Jose Sharks which have the 3rd most experienced team with an average age of 28.5 years and on the other hand there are the Tampa Bay Lightning (26.3 years) with the 4th youngest roster of all NHL-teams. And then we have the Pittsburgh Penguins and the St. Louis Blues, they both are more or less middle of the pack in this category. So, again, also, the average age of a team gives us no clue at all.

Next wisdom: You need to have a top goalie to win in the NHL. Ok, let’s face all the goalie rankings from different reliable hockey-sources. If I look at data from the last two years up to a couple of weeks ago, I come to a more or less consistent Top 10 or 11 goalie-ranking: 1. Lundqvist, 2. Price, 3. Quick, 4. Holtby, 5. Schneider, 6. Crawford, 7. Rask, 8. Fleury, 9. Smith 10. Bobrovsky, 11. Mrazek.  You know what?
Not even one of these goalies – and this is NOT my personal goalie-ranking, it is a summary of rankings published in reliable hockey-magazines such as The Hockey News – is a goalie of the four semi-finalists.

Does this mean that you don’t need an excellent goalie to succeed? Partly yes; these statistics supports my thesis that you “only” need” at least average goaltenders to succeed but not necessarily the best ones. To be very precise: You definitely need good or even very good goaltending to succeed in NHL-playoffs, but there is a small but important difference between being basically a very good goalie and displaying very good goaltending… This means that an average goalie is also capable of dishing out excellent playoff-run-performances. Every goalie has hot and cold streaks and if you are an average goalie but you are lucky enough to have a hot streak then you will put exactly the good performance on the ice when it is needed most: Good goaltending. And even if you are Henrik Lundqvist and you are unlucky enough to be on a cold streak… then…

Now, let’s turn to another often heard NHL “playoff-wisdom”: The San Jose Sharks and the St. Louis Blues can never win, these are the typical loser teams with “loser-poster-boys” like Patrick Marleau and Joe Thornton. You need the playoff warriors and winner-personalities like Jonathan Toews and Corey Crawford, who always play at their best when it counts the most. Well… again… not so fast. Joe Thornton was voted as the 2nd-star in the successful quarterfinal Game 7 versus Nashville. Thornton and Marleau are now heading to the semi-final and the same goes for the so-called “chronic loser team” St. Louis Blues. What about Toews and Crawford? They lost with the Blackhawks in the first round and both underperformed compared to what they are able to put on the table. Toews and Crawford were playoff heroes one year ago but the following is often forgotten: Crawford, for example, also played pretty below average in last year’s playoff first round. The unspectacular truth is that there are probably no players who are always bad or always good in clutch times. Sometimes they are good and sometimes they are not. Again, a boring result, unspectacular facts. But, not so fast: Are these facts really boring, is this really unspectacular?

For me, all these unspectacular findings are extremely spectacular because it proves more or less that we know much less about successful hockey than we might admit. I compare our hockey knowledge a little bit with the knowledge of brain scientists. Our brain and the sport of hockey is most exciting and we try to discover and control everything as fast as possible. We are unbelievably hungry in terms of statistical knowledge, but, at the same time, we are often too uncritical of theories and “hocus-pocus”. Let’s realize that we know just very little about the mystery of our brains and we indeed do not know that much about winning in hockey in top-level competitions. Winning and losing is still a mystery to a huge extent and, probably, the luck-factor is still underrated in our analysis. But this is exactly what makes our sport of hockey so attractive. The outcome of results of games between two major-league pro-teams is still quite unpredictable and this is a big reason why I love hockey so much.

Let’s embrace ice-hockey and let’s further study our game with critical but also with winking eyes and always remember the following quote by William Shakespeare: "The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool." ;-)

Thomas Roost, May 2016

What does a Icehockey Scout do in Switzerland?

I very often notice that people think completely wrong about what a hockey-scout is doing in Switzerland and not seldom even sports-journalists don’t know or don’t do research enough about what is a scout’s life and in my personal case what is a scout’s life in Switzerland.

The biggest misunderstanding is that a lot of people mix a scout’s job up with the one of an agent. A scout – who takes his job really serious - can’t be an agent and vice-versa because an agent is first and foremost a salesman of his clients and a scout must be a completely independent and very critical voice in terms of player-evaluations. So many people think that me as a scout I have clients (players) and they pay me money or the they believe that I discover a hockey-talent that nobody else knows about, then bring this player to a team and get money for this. Completely wrong. In these modern times there are no hockey-talents undiscovered anymore and nobody else knows about; these times are long gone but of course there are tons of different opinions about players.

Once again: A hockey-scout is an independent critical voice in the full process of player-evaluations. In my personal case I’m proud to work for 20 years now for the NHL, write reports about players, discuss players with my scouting-colleagues and do international criss-cross-rankings of so called “NHL-draftees”, players who might get drafted in the upcoming NHL-draft. In addition I have a small consulting-job since 9 years with the target to help a Swiss National-League team (3 years SCB and now since 6 years EHC Biel) to find promising B-League-players and/or junior-players with pro-potential. Both jobs are small jobs, means part-time-jobs. My fulltime-job is the one as a Head Human Resources in an international tourist-company with more than 1’500 employees worldwide. Another not seldom misunderstanding is that not me as the scout takes decisions for the club. As a consultant I present recommendations about not very well known players, young players and import-players. Of course the club never asks me about already established players from our league because they know these players well enough  - some sporting-directors even played with or against these players – so they don’t need my opinion about such players. In the very end there are players playing in a scout’s team the scout did recommend, players a scout never got asked about and even players a scout explicitly didn’t recommend to hire. It’s wrong to believe that players in a team got hired from a scout.

To summarize:  A scout is not an agent, doesn’t get money from players and also not from clubs for specific player-recommendations and a scout doesn’t take decisions in a club about player-recruiting. A scout is a critical, independent voice in terms of player-evaluations and usually gets a yearly small consulting-contract with the target to support the sporting-director in his decision-taking.

Personally I look at it as a small company, means I can’t do everything by myself because there are tons of interesting hockey-games worldwide and of course I can’t cover all of them. I couldn’t do so even if I would be a fulltime-scout, personally I follow approx. 100 games per season live in arenas plus tons of games at home on computer. So, one of my most important parts is to evaluate and “hire” two highly qualified so called birddogs in each of the relevant hockey-countries. People who deliver me professional, critical und detailed infos about players in their countries, I – resp. my team, the team who asks me – could be interested in. Even after 20 years I’m still fine-tuning this group of birddogs, I’m sure that my educations in human-resources subjects are a big advantage to this. It’s naive to believe that a single scout can evaluate worldwide all relevant players. A good scout needs excellent “birddogs”, needs excellent information, high-end stats and a certain level of technology to come to a fair amount of relevant information about players. He definitely needs an experienced eye and needs to go to games in the arenas, especially to games what won’t be broadcasted on TV and/or via live-stream. Then you put all the single information-puzzle-pieces together to a hopefully clear picture. In the very end it’s always up to the scout to give an opinion. Do I recommend to hire this player for this or that price, are there cheaper, similar quality alternatives, are there similar players on the market? To all these questions the scout gives his personal answer but this answer should be based on a variety of information, of course including personal player-viewings. In terms of our Swiss player market I also started to run an Excel-sheet with informations about approx. 600 players in our different SUI leagues and with a dynamic evaluation process. This database is going to be updated every 6 months.

What technology do I use? I go to games with my I-Pad-Mini in terms of line-ups and looking up some stats if needed. I have my prepared paper-document in front of me with up to 5 players I follow and report about in a single game, write my notes down in handwriting and transform my handwritten notes at home into a computer-system. Some scouts chose the direct input to computers and work with laptops during games. I might also go this direction in the very near future probably. I’m a bit conservative with the use of latest technologies but in the very end I definitely will use it also. In addition I know dozens of helpful webpages with information about players, buy worldwide all relevant hockey-magazine, keep them and read all kind of books with the subject of talent development, talent evaluation and hockey-related content.

You see, I’m a real “puckhead” and now we come to the perfect profile of a hockey-scout. Is it an advantage if you were a player in the past? Yes, it is definitely an advantage compared to somebody who never did do a team-sport. Is it important that you were a pro-hockey-player in the past? No, not really. Don’t overrate the level you played, this is not very important. But of course I did and do talk here and there with former NHL-players who are scouts now and in some details they did teach me interesting things what maybe former minor-leaguers don’t know. But: As it is in all jobs: The most important success-factor is the passion. You have to love your job, you have to love being a scout. If you are top motivated in what you do, if you work hard and if you love to work hard: THIS is the real success-factor. Rest assured that my “birddogs” (former players, passionate puck-heads, men and women) come from completely different backgrounds with different strengths and weaknesses. If you have different backgrounds in your team and you have the ability to take the best out of everybody… then you are an excellent scout. I’m not right there yet, I still have to learn a lot but I’m a keen learner and I guess I improve year by year…and I will never stop to learn until my very last day! 

To be a hockey-scout is the best part-time-job you can imagine! My worldwide network with awesome people is priceless and I love to travel to places I never would go as an ordinary tourist. Huge parts of my rich life-experience is because of being a hockey-scout for the NHL and some teams.  I’m very thankful and proud to be a small part of the great community in the game of hockey and hope that I can go on forever!

Horgen, 21^st March 2016 / Thomas Roost                                                                                  ScoutInSwitzerland.docx