In the play-offs, the goalkeepers are under special observation. After the 5:3 in the sixth match of the final series between the ZSC Lions and Lausanne, everything is coming to a head for their duel on Tuesday.
Witcher in action: ZSC center Derek Grant fails against Lausanne goalie Connor Hughes.
Salvatore Di Nolfi / Keystone
They are called sorcerers, Mister 50 Percent, and there are people who claim that you have to be a little crazy to take on the task that puts them in the spotlight. But they are definitely key figures on the way to the title. The goalkeeper is only one of six skaters on the ice per team. And yet their importance is greater, even if they only score goals on rare occasions. Robert Mayer from Geneva achieved this a year ago in the play-off quarter-finals against HC Lugano when he decided the game and the series with a shot across the ice rink into the abandoned Ticino goal.
But more often the goalies are the focus of attention because of their saves or mistakes. This is no different in the current series between the ZSC Lions and Lausanne. In the fourth final game, Czech Simon Hrubec initiated the Lions’ defeat with two solid goals. In the following match he shone with a shutout (3-0) before being substituted on Saturday after conceding four goals – even though he was blameless for all of the goals. Arno Del Curto had predicted a strong reaction from Hrubec before the fifth match. “That was just bad luck,” he said, “I’m convinced it will hold up excellently again from now on.”
The 67-year-old from the Engadin is a silent observer of the current final series. He won his HCD titles with four different goalies (Lars Weibel, Jonas Hiller, Leonardo Genoni, Reto Berra). With his ability to grow in crucial moments, Genoni was something like the primus inter pares of the Graubünden dynasty. Del Curto says: “If Leo had a slightly less good match once, he was guaranteed to be even better in the next one.”
Del Curto’s exile for one reprimanded
But Del Curto also knows the other side of the coin. When he reached the final for the first time with an extremely young team in 1998, his goalkeeper Nando Wieser came into the media’s sights because of two or three mistakes. Del Curto then brought him under his roof and put him in the guest room. «I shielded him and forbade him to read newspapers. Nando couldn’t handle the criticism that was expressed and saw himself as the main culprit for the fact that we ended up on the losing end against EV Zug.”
Del Curto’s control of the media was still simple back then. The smartphone was only introduced a year later, and online media hardly existed yet. Lars Weibel was one of Del Curto’s master goalies. Today the Rapperswil native works as Director of Sports for Swiss Ice Hockey and is therefore responsible for all national teams and their goalkeepers. He knows both sides of the business. «At the beginning of my career I heard repeatedly that I wasn’t a goalie who could win titles. The statement became a great motivation for me to prove all my critics, but also myself, wrong.”
He already did that in Lugano in 1999, when he shared the task with the Frenchman Cristobal Huet. Weibel says: “We were protected even less back then than is the case today. I saw it as part of my job to answer questions and provide information.” At the same time, he says you also have to take into account that not only ice hockey, but also journalism has changed since then. “The pressure on the goalkeepers is probably greater today than it was back then.”
Dealing with these special circumstances is part of the job, according to Weibel. «The approach is still the same as when I was still in goal. In this phase of mastery you immerse yourself in a different life. It’s all about hockey. The focus is solely on thinking about the next match.” Weibel says you have to like this particular challenge, maybe even love it. “It’s part of the fascination. You can have an enormous influence as an individual player in a match.”
Few people have handled this pressure better, at least externally, than Renato Tosio. The Grisons player was the backbone of SC Bern’s four championship titles (1989, 1991, 1992 and 1996). In the spring of 2001 he retired from top-level sport. The following autumn he almost made a comeback to big rivals Lugano. But Tosio thought better of it and thereby prevented his legendary status from being permanently damaged in ice hockey-crazy Bern. Even today he is received like a king by the stewards and the audience in Bern. He always brought a Bündner nut cake with him to give back some of what his followers had given him.
«I can’t understand when players today walk past their supporters without looking or saying a word. For many of them, we are a reason for living.” Withdrawing or refusing questions from journalists, as has become the norm in the league today, was never an issue for Tosio. It wouldn’t have suited his nature either. On the contrary. On the way to the away game in Lugano, he tried to get in touch with his supporters at the motorway service station. Today he says: “You could have spoken to me while we were coming in. I only went into the tunnel immediately before the match when I was sitting in the dressing room.
Tension should not paralyze
The special atmosphere of the play-offs does not leave Tosio, now 59, unaffected today. “The atmosphere in Lausanne, for example, is incomparable and takes me back to the time when I was on the ice myself. Nothing gave me more extreme feelings of happiness than when I played a good match.”
Tosio says that in addition to being relaxed, you also need total tension. «If someone isn’t a little tense at this stage of the championship, then I don’t think they’re ready to give it their all. You just can’t let this tension paralyze you.” He enjoys seeing the ease with which Lausanne’s goalie Connor Hughes gets on the ice in his first final. “You get the impression that he doesn’t feel any pressure at all.”
It is precisely this quality that allowed Leonardo Genoni to grow into a seven-time champion goalie and that distinguishes great goalkeepers. Zurich’s Simon Hrubec shows this quality, as does Connor Hughes in the HC Lausanne goal. That’s why both can still hope for the title before the finalissima on Tuesday.
The best goalkeepers in Swiss play-off history
Leonardo Genoni: 7 titles
When looking for the best goalkeeper in Swiss play-off history, there is no way around Leonardo Genoni. The 36-year-old from Zurich has been champion seven times with HC Davos (2009, 2011, 2015), SC Bern (2017, 2019) and EV Zug (2021, 2022). He was one, if not the key figure in each of the titles. After his team fell behind 3-0 in the 2022 final series against the ZSC Lions, he only conceded three goals in the following four games. No one else reads the game better than the Stoic from Lake Zurich.
Renato Tosio: 4 Titles
The 59-year-old from Graubünden was not a stylist. He used to defend his goal with wild jumps and frantic saves. This week he joked: “If you lie flat on the ice, at least you won’t get a window through the bottom.” Tosio was the architect of four championship titles for SC Bern (1979, 1981, 1992, 1997). Tosio was also one of the greatest entertainers and a crowd favorite of his time. Tosio’s great opponent, Reto Pavoni from Kloten, also won four titles (1993, 1994, 1995, 1996).
Ari Sulander: 3 Titles
The Finn was two decades ahead of his time. He established himself as the first goalie with a foreign license in Switzerland. Sulander came to Zurich in 1998 as the Finnish national goalkeeper and was probably the best transfer from long-time sports director Simon Schenk and a key figure in the development of ZSC, from a lift to a model club. Sulander won three titles with the Lions (2000, 2001, 2008) and the Champions Hockey League (2008). This season, half of the league (7 clubs) relied at least partially on a goalkeeper with a foreign license.
Marco Bührer: 4 titles
The Bülacher from the youth department of EHC Kloten had the thankless task of replacing the legend Tosio in Bern. In the book “Direktabnahme” he tells how it dawned on him for the first time at his farewell game, when almost 16,000 spectators celebrated the Grisons, what a task he had taken on. Bührer convinced the skeptics with three titles (2004, 2010, 2013), and he won a fourth in 2016 as a backup to the Czech Jakub Stepanek while he was physically ill.