What is wrong with SCB?

The SCB is fighting for a playoff spot and this causes a lot of emotions, controversial opinions and polemic. As follows, I will present you my personal opinion about SC Bern. 

What are the reasons for this unexpected fight? How good is this team? Is there anything wrong with the coaching? Can SCB still become champion? 

Passionate fans!

First of all: The main reason for this somehow disappointing result in the standings is the huge amount of injuries. Important players were injured, the goalie situation is unfortunate, they are desperately missing Eric Blum plus they also had other significant player injuries. These injuries are the most important and at the same time the most unspectacular reason for the not so good results at this point. Of course there are also other reasons:

Important to know: Even a complete healthy SCB is not on top of the league with their roster. ZSC, HCD and Lugano have the better rosters. Zug is very close. The actual roster right now (without Bührer, Blum) is pretty average and we have a handful of teams with similar average rosters (Geneva, Fribourg, Kloten, Lausanne). Don’t get me wrong: Even this SCB roster that is playing right now (without Bührer and without Blum) is definitely good enough for a playoff-spot, but it’s pretty close and with a little bit of bad luck – which SCB lately had in some games – they will be empty-handed in the end. 

What went wrong with the SCB-roster? Most of the SCB core players are already pretty old (Plüss, Helbling, Gerber, Rüfenacht, Roy, Jobin). The age problem is not the biggest problem, but still… In the tendency, it’s something to talk about. Secondly, I noticed in recent years that a lot of transfers had the obvious target to make the team bigger, stronger, more aggressive and meaner (Rüfenacht, Helbling, Moser, Reichert, Krüger). A couple of years ago this was the one and only NHL-wisdom: “To become big, mean, strong and to have warriors is the only way to survive in the playoffs”. Not so much anymore. The game has changed, even in the NHL: The present and the future of the NHL and of hockey in general is skilled and fast players. Smaller, skilled and fast players get a bit more chances again and this also affects the d-men. In the old days, rugged, hard-nosed, big and strong d-man were on top of the shopping-list when asked about d-men. Not so much anymore: Also the modern d-man has to be a fast, quick, mobile skater, has to have good puck-control-skills and must be able to be a good, quick thinking transition player. Otherwise d-men can’t handle the skilled and fast forwards and can’t handle the overall speed of the game.

Coming back to SCB: Eric Blum is such a modern d-man 

The best SCB puck-carrier and -mover through neutral zone

but if I look at the others I can’t see much of mobile, speedy, puck-moving d-men in the SCB-defense plus some of them are in an age where you lose a step or two and that’s why the loss of Blum is hurting so much! To put in a little bit of polemic: The SCB 15/16 is too much old-style-hockey and not suited perfectly for the modern game. Skills and speed are more important now and probably also in future. Size and strength will be a little bit less important. The perfect team has a good balance between these two aspects and in my opinion the SCB 15/16 leans a bit too much on size, strength and raw grit, especially in their third and fourth units.

The lack of skills was obvious in the Champions Hockey League-games vs Scandinavian teams and I was wondering pretty early whether the skill-level will be enough for being a top SUI-league team. A third reason is the underperformance of captain Martin Plüss and Simon Bodenmann. Is it fair to criticize a great sportsman like Martin Plüss? Yes, it is, he is the captain and the leader of this team. A wise person did once tell: that “a leader takes more than his share of the blame and gets less than his share of the credit” – So, Martin Plüss scored just a bit more than 0.5 points per game so far and this is simply by far not enough. Me too, I don’t know the reason for this but I have theses: 

Great captain, subpar season

Martin Plüss is already 38 or 39 years old and it was just a question of time when he will start to slow down. So, his regress is not completely unexpected. Similar goes for Simon Bodenmann. He already had a bad season last year in Kloten and actually he never had a really great season. I admit that he has decent skills and can shoot the puck but I guess he was a bit overrated and people in Bern might expect too much from him. He is a good player but not that good. Obviously, the SCB 15/16 it’s not quite good enough to be on the level of the very best. There is not much missing, they need maybe just one or two really good acquisitions for the next season, they definitely need another good puck-moving, mobile defender and then they are again on even keel with the best in the league. But right now they are not right there, the team on paper is not THAT good. 

What about coaching? I don’t think that the coaching is a real problem. I didn’t like the one or the other quote from Lars Leuenberger but I also can’t see really bad mistakes in terms of systems, game-plans and so on. Actually, there is anyway not a hockey-system that clearly beats others. The system-discussion is vastly overrated in my opinion. And anyway: Nobody of us is part of the team and can listen to what he is telling about game-plans and individual requests he asks for in the locker-room. If we want to know how good of a coach Lars Leuenberger is we have to ask the players, they know best. Of course they are employees and the head-coach is their boss in a way, so they might not answer real frankly but still...  

What can we still expect from the SCB in this season? Everything: The SCB can become champion although it’s not likely. They can become champion because the luck-factor in the playoffs is very big, much bigger than in the regular-season (a hot streak of the opposing goalie? An injury to your keyplayer or even two of your keyplayers? One or two unlucky bounces?). All this decides playoff-series much more than we are prepared to believe and that’s why my dear SCB-fans: Don’t give up, the dream is alive! The championship is still possible, not likely but possible! Enjoy your SCB!

28th January 2016 / Thomas Roost