The Zurich team won 4-3 against Biel at the start of the quarter-final series. The top scorer Denis Malgin decides the game. And the veteran Christian Marti sees a new maturity in his ranks.
Match winner: Denis Malgin makes the difference with two goals.
Ennio Leanza / Keystone
Anyone who has listened to EHC Biel in the last few days has noticed a hint of optimism before the start of this play-off quarter-final series. Somehow win game 1 and spread the poison of nervousness in the ZSC, that was the plan. Then Biel would have a chance to advance to the semi-finals as a blatant outsider. Because there are doubts about how well the ZSC can deal with setbacks. That’s what happens when a team practically celebrates a start/finish victory in qualifying and doesn’t have to go through a serious crisis.
A defeat at the start might have conjured up the ghosts of the past: a year ago, the proud Zurich team had little or nothing to oppose the Biel team in the play-off semi-finals, and they didn’t win a single game.
Not much would have been missing and the first step in the bold Biel project would have been successful. After 44 minutes, Luca Cunti, who once grew up at ZSC, gave Biel a 3-2 lead. The tension in the Swiss Life Arena was noticeable, the coach Marc Crawford was annoyed by unpunished fouls in Biel. There was disbelief in the stands.
But 2024 is not 2023, the differences are enormous. Biel is not an aspiring underdog who ruffles opponents with attractive, fast-paced hockey and whose players release additional strength to dedicate a farewell title to coach Antti Törmänen. But a physically and mentally weak team that fell to 9th place, had to struggle with the aftermath of the completely unsuccessful era of coach Petri Matikainen and only reached the quarter-finals after the arduous journey to the play-in.
EHC Olten is considering withdrawing from the Swiss League
In contrast, there is a ZSC that can no longer be shaken so easily. It is massively better staffed than last year, the squad is so broad that the Zurich team can afford to use two designated future national players for the GCK Lions, Nicolas Baechler and Joel Henry. The farm team qualified for the play-off final for the first time since 1997 on Friday. And thus ensured that the long-simmering conflicts about the future of the Swiss League broke out openly: According to the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Marc Thommen, the semi-final loser Olten is considering withdrawing from amateur hockey due to a lack of financial prospects. SC Langenthal had already given up in 2023, as did Martigny a few days ago. A farewell to Olten would be a fiasco for the already struggling lower house.
Henry was the celebrated match winner with three goals in the seventh game, but there is still no place for him in the ZSC. Which says a lot about the quality in the Zurich ranks. National team defender Christian Marti, who has experienced a lot in eight seasons in Zurich, says it this way: “I don’t want to offend anyone, but our current foreigners are doing their job. You can only win in the play-offs if your best players are actually your best players. That is the case with us. And: Denis helps.”
Denis, this is Denis Malgin, the artist and first-line center who returned from overseas in the summer. “Unleash the Lion” is the ZSC’s play-off motto. On Saturday evening, Malgin, 27, was primarily unleashed. It was he who decided the game with two goals within 138 seconds.
Last year Malgin was sorely missed as a thinker, director and leader. Now he has proven his worth again, he is the best, most complete Swiss striker in the league. “You just have to respect that: when it counts, he’s there. His line makes the difference offensively. And that is no coincidence. It’s not like he just makes a living off his talent. Some might think: Yes, he has Russian blood, so you can do magic on your own. But this is wrong. He works damn hard. And that pays off.”
The ZSC gained a lot of self-confidence in the confidently won qualification phase
Biel didn’t find an answer to Malgin – and will probably mourn this missed opportunity for a while. Whoever scores three goals in a play-off game in Zurich against the best defense and the league’s most reliable goalkeeper, Simon Hrubec, has to win the game if they want to have serious hopes of progressing. Because that shouldn’t happen too often anymore, the ZSC plays too calmly for that. Marti says: “It helped us that we won often throughout the winter. This strengthens self-confidence. And it helps you not lose your head when you fall behind. I think we’ve matured as a team.” Then he adds: “Biel is a strong, unpleasant opponent. They always manage to stretch the game apart, which is not easy to defend. But we are well prepared for it. And we play with this feeling in our stomach that we want to return the favor. We haven’t forgotten what happened last year.”
The question for the continuation of this series is whether Biel has the energy to react again. Saturday’s game was the fifth game within ten days, while ZSC was able to rest for almost two weeks. The league did the play-in winner no favors with the schedule – the start of this quarter-final series could have been scheduled a day later. These are considerations that the ZSC cannot care about. He has passed his first endurance test. On the way to the tenth title in the club’s history, it won’t be the last this spring.