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.
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| 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
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