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 ;-)
Horgen, 14th November 2016 / Thomas Roost
