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