No hockey coach in Switzerland is as heavy discussed as Arno Del Curto
from HC Davos. In these discussions I do notice mainly two camps: The befuddled
lovers, admirers and the unfair haters. Also in the media there seems to be
nothing in between but the media tends heavily to the uncritical admirers.
Because I seem to be one of the guys without positive or negative emotions
about this charismatic coach I guess it’s time for a more deep and objective
analyses about Arno Del Curto. How good is he, what does he good and what does
he not so good? Ok, I admit, also me I had a inner feeling about this coach. My
inner feeling told me that he is a good coach and this on a scale „very bad,
bad, average, good, very good, messiahs“. Let’ see whether I will change my not
so factual based opinion about him after doing my „homework“, after this
hopefully objective analyses.
First of all I have to explain what is a good coach. Of course, here
already we can start the discussion but I stop this because it’s not the topic
of this analyses. Just in a few words: A good coach is a coach who develops
players, makes them better players. A good coach is when his teams play a type
of hockey that attracts spectators and maybe even sponsors. A good coach is
when he has better results than what you can expect from the existing
player-roster and in the case of Arno Del Curto – because he is Mr. Everything
in Davos – I also dig in deeper in terms of how good are the players he hires
including import-players.
So let’s start with the non-factual element. Do Arno Del Curtos teams play an attractive style of hockey? This
is up to your taste, do you like vanilla or chocolate? Well I have a very clear
personal opinion on this. Yes, the way the HC Davos plays hockey is very
attractive, I just love it. This is for me by far the best part of what Arno
Del Curto offers as a coach. It’s just fun to watch the high-tempo, intense
transition type of play! 10/10 points for this!
Next point. How good of a
player-developer is Arno Del Curto? Do players develop better working with
Arno Del Curto than they develop elsewhere? Of course we don’t have a clear
answer to this because we never know how player X or Y would have developed in
different circumstances. But there are some facts we have to face: Arno Del
Curto usually manages to bring the best young (but not very young) hockey-players
to Davos. He hires the key-players from the U20-nationalteams such as Genoni,
Berra, Stoop, Sciaroni, Simion, Hofmann, Guerra (he hired him even before),
later Walser. This is nothing special and has nothing to do with good scouting
or something like that because all teams wanted to have these players but for
some reason they did end in Davos (maybe because of the mystery aura Arno Del
Curto can offer (and this would be a quality!) or maybe because of better
offers than others (and this would mean thank you HC Davos “Kristall-Club”),
probably it’s something in between. But again: All these young players were
very well known and average fans would also have hired them. There are some
unknown players what indicated good scouting (Corvi) and some average players
nobody else wanted (Jung e.g.) but this result is very unspectacular, just
average. I give him 5/10 for this. Do players develop better under Arno Del
Curto than elsewhere? No, there are quite strong indications that this is not
the case. Michel Riesen did more or less regress in Davos and a return to the
NHL was never really discussed anymore. The normal expectation of
U20-Nationalteam-keyplayers is that they develop into good NLA-players when
they become 24, 25 years old with some of them will be forces even in the
senior-nationalteam. And this is exactly what more or less happened with these
players in Davos, they became good NLA-players but this is nothing unexpected exceptional
and definitely nothing outstanding. Another fact to this: Not even one actual
Swiss NHL-player did go through schooling of Arno Del Curto (Niederreiter did
work just a couple of weeks with Arno Del Curto and the credit of Jonas Hiller
and Reto Berra goes more to the goalie-coach Marcel Kull. To be fair: The
credit to Arno Del Curto is that he hired Marcel Kull). Also the home-grown
Davos players such as Dino Wieser, Marc Wieser, Simon Kindschi did develop more
or less as expected, nothing spectacular. In the case of Marc Wieser I even
have to tell that he did take his huge development-steps in his time in Biel… So,
putting this all together there is definitely not a spectacular record in terms
of player-development, it’s pretty much average, as expected. I give him
6/10... could easily be 5/10.
Arno Del Curto is also always
responsible in hiring the import-players. How good is he in this? My definition of
a good import-player: The player receives a contract-extension after the
initial contract or he got a better contract in another Swiss A-team, the KHL
or the NHL and succeeded there. I do list all import-players I did find in
alphabetical order with maybe the one or the other mistake, means gives “just” the
big picture. I did not include the NHL-lockout-players:
Oscar Ackeström, Dick Axelsson, Jaroslav Bednar, Vaclav Benak, Lonny
Bohonos, Brian Bonin, Pavel Brendl, Jan Brejcak, Alexandre Daigle, Radek Dvorak,
Niklas Danielsson, Todd Elik, Johan Fransson, Radek Hamr, Brett Hauer, Jonas
Höglund, Zbynek Irgl, Lee Jinman, Patrik Juhlin, Ville Koistinen, Juraj Kolnik,
Zdenek Kutlak, Erik Laundry, Mike Maneluk, Kevin Miller, Janne Niskala, Ryan O’Connor,
Perttu Lindgren, Josef Marha, Janne Niinimaa, Pärssinen, Paulsson, Niklas
Persson, Alexandre Picard, Vojtek Polak,
Tyler Redenbach, Barry Richter, Yves
Sarault, Petr Sejna, Devin Setoguchi, Eero Somervuori, Ahren Spylo, Petr
Sykora, Petr Taticek, Vaclav Varada, Erik Westrum, Daniel Widing, Shane Willis,
Landon Wilson
You can judge by yourself what players left a lasting impression in your
mind, what players you really did like. Of course, this is a bit of a
subjective measurement but still: If we look at this list and compare with
import-players in other teams I give him 7/10, he is definitely better than
average in this category but also clearly not outstanding.
The team-results: Are the HC
Davos-results better with Arno Del Curto than what you could expect looking at
the team-rosters? The facts: Since 1996 he did win 6 championships plus
3 runner-ups. This is definitely a good or even a very good result on first
sight. How good were the rosters in all these succesful years? In 2002 he had
Weibel, Hiller, Forster, Gianola, Jan Von Arx, Ambühl, Patrik Fischer, Reto Von
Arx und Michel Riesen. This roster was simply the best in this year, favorit to
win the Championship and he delivered. Good job but not really unexpected
outstanding. 2005 was the NHL-lockout-year with Nash, Thornton and Hagman.
Looking at the roster: HCD was the clear favourite and Arno did deliver. Good
job but not really unexpected outstanding. 2007 still with brothers Von Arx in
their prime with some decent additions (Baumann, Guggisberg, Winkler), did win
again. Not the clear favourite but one of the contenders. Did win, very good
job. 2009 with the additions of Grossmann, Stoop, Bürgler, Della Rossa again
one of the contenders. Did win, very good job, did win as a contender but not
as the clear favourite. In 2011 again some key-transfers with Back, Ramholt,
Joggi, Tallarini, Sciaroni. Definitely a contender but maybe not the clear
favourite. Did win, very good job. In 2015 Davos benefitted from the transfer
everybody else also wanted to realise. Andres Ambühl, in addition they had
Walser, Hofmann, Simion, Du Bois, great but probably not cheap players… Still
not the clear favourite because of the ZSC Lions, but definitely again one of
the contenders on paper. Did win, very good job. On the downside there were
years in between with not so good success. Especially between 2012 and 2014 the
HC Davos results were in average worse than what could have been expected from
their rosters. My mark to all this: 8/10 very good but not exceptional.
International results:
I do exclude all the Spengler-Cups from this (by the way I love the
Spengler Cup!) because it’s always a tournament with too many extra-players
here and there and you never really know how serious the games are played in
terms of results.
I do remember Arno Del Curto very well in various interviews where he
declared international success as the most important target. Many years back –
unfortunately I can’t remember the exact year and the team they played – he
declared a game in the then called “Europacup of the Champions” as the ultimate
target of the season and Davos quite badly lost. It was in the Czech Republic
or Sweden, I can’t really remember, sorry. Fail, maybe he did overrate Swiss
hockey at this time or he just failed. Not a good job. Years later there was
the ultimate match-up vs the Chicago Blackhawks in Zurich. Arno Del Curto
declared this game as the most important of the season and he wanted to show
the NHL how good his team is. It was a desaster, 2-9. The game strategy was
very naive, Davos wanted to beat this brilliant NHL-team with speed, intensity
and skills… common… Badly failed, Arno Del Curto, it was an embarassing Swiss hockey-moment
but also probably the birth of the ZSC-Lions miracle-win vs Chicago just one or
two days later… This year we had the Champions Hockey League and it was the
ultimate dream of Arno Del Curto to win this pot. Davos played really well in
this competition and did do so as the only Swiss team. Respect, quite well done
but not in the final and not winning the pot. A good but not a very good and
not an outstanding result. For international success I give Arno Del Curto 5/10
– and if it would be not this good Champions-Hockey-League-season 15/16 it
would be a 3/10. To be fair: This international success-mark is based on just a
couple of games and of course on very thin ice, but still.
Putting everything together in one basket. What is my conclusion? Did
this analyses change my inner feeling? You might remember: My inner feeling did
tell me that Arno Del Curto is a good coach.
My final conclusion:
Arno Del Curto is a good to very good coach, something in between.
According to my analyses he is slightly better than my inner feeling indicated.
Between good and very good means clearly better than average but it also means
not very good and also quite far away from outstanding and definitely not a
messiahs!
What about his personality? I don’t know really, I don’t know him
personally but there are some indications that he is a very sensitive person
with a pretty thin skin and this leads sometimes to the one and the other
irritating comments in critical media-inverviews. After so many years as the
undisputed Zar of Davos I also noticed some diva-like behaviours. He also tries
to make much play with his charisma, tries to show too much that he is a rebel
and unique. But that’s ok, he is a salesman and yes, to be a good salesman is
part of the game if you want to have good contracts and who doesn’t want to
have this? And yes, he is charismatic but charismatic has nothing to do with
good or bad but we have the tendency to vastly overrate charismatic people and
underrate humble, low key personalities.
In the very end maybe my most important sentence once again: It’s just
fun to watch games of the HC Davos. Thank you Arno Del Curto for this
entertaining part of your coaching!
