In ice hockey, the play-offs are considered the fifth season. What actually makes them so fascinating? And how do the protagonists deal with the pressure?
Play-off expert: The six-time champion Beat Forster, who has just resigned.
Ennio Leanza / KEYSTONE
Sean Simpson encourages a little thought experiment. He says: «Imagine it’s March 10th and the championship ends with the trophy being handed over after the end of the qualification. What would we have missed, how many stories, emotions and highlights?”
Simpson, 63, has held many roles in Swiss ice hockey – and experienced almost everything. He was: national coach, champion with Zug and Champions League winner with the ZSC Lions. But when he first worked in Switzerland in 1985, as an obscure substitute foreigner signed from the Dutch league at ZSC in the National League B, the play-offs in Switzerland did not yet exist.
It was only introduced in 1986. And since then it has not only been a single success story, but also a significant economic factor. Most clubs are already operating with a structural deficit. Without the play-off – the turnover per home game is usually between 200,000 and 300,000 francs – the ice hockey entertainment industry would not be sustainable.
It has already happened that players sent their families to the hotel
In Switzerland, no one has played more play-off games than Beat Forster, the defender and six-time champion who retired a few days ago; 237 games in 23 years. Forster, 41, says he has seen the play-offs drive people crazy. He reports on players who moved their families to the hotel so that their concentration would not be disturbed.
The play-offs also clouded his senses: he once competed even though he would have had to sit out with a concussion. He says: “It used to be that it wasn’t a concussion if you still knew your name and your team. Looking back, I wouldn’t do that again, head injuries are no joke.”
To this day, however, it is part of the myth of the indomitable, noble, brave ice hockey player that he throws himself into the fray when injured, regardless of whether the bone is broken or the cruciate ligament is torn. Doug Shedden, the former coach of HC Lugano and EV Zug, once stormed in the NHL in Pittsburgh alongside the shining light Mario Lemieux and says: “In my time it was clear that you play as long as you don’t have a life-threatening injury. Fever, bruises, wounds: it doesn’t matter. If someone had said: ‘Sorry, I have a cold and a fever of 38 degrees, I can’t play’, they would have been laughed at and simply dragged onto the ice.”
“You have to find a way to keep a clear head”: Coach Sean Simpson in 2016 during the play-off quarterfinals with the Kloten Flyers.
Gian Ehrenzeller / Keystone
It is a melting pot that also brings out dark sides; the pressure can be almost paralyzing. You inject yourself into fitness so as not to let your colleagues and the club down. And takes sleeping pills to at least get some rest.
The latter also applies not least to the trainers and managers. For them, the play-offs can decide whether they lose their jobs. Sleep problems are widespread in Swiss ice hockey, not least in the sports director position. Hardly anyone wants to talk about it publicly; they don’t want to reveal any vulnerability.
For the spectators, however, the play-off is a fun event with enormous entertainment value. Stadiums across the country are sold out; in Lausanne it took 30 seconds until tickets for the decisive seventh quarter-final game against Davos were sold out.
Coach Simpson can talk about what makes it so fascinating. He has experienced the full range of emotions: frustration, ecstasy, disillusionment. And the liberating catharsis of having turned around a 3-0 series deficit.
He says that hardly any series has left him with such lasting memories as the semi-final against Ambri-Piotta in the EV Zug championship season of 1997/98: “The momentum changed so often, I have rarely experienced that. We lost Game 5 at home 7-1. There were people who threw their season tickets on the ice because they thought we were done for. I had to listen to a lot from the stands. But that’s how it is in the playoffs: you have to find a way to keep a clear head. As a coach anyway, you can’t show too many emotions – no matter in which direction.”
Lars Leuenberger, master coach at SC Bern in 2016, sees it similarly. He says: “You can’t let yourself get dragged down too much. There are always aspects from which you can draw something positive. As a coach, you have to be able to sell that to your players.”
Conquer a mountain? Perhaps. Or at least get some sleep
In Zug, the president repeatedly intervened in tricky situations. After the defeat, Fredy Egli ordered the team to the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne to see “Everest” in the Imax cinema; You can conquer any mountain, that was the metaphor.
A lot of importance was attached to the action afterwards, folklore in a masterful frenzy. Even if reliable sources say that quite a few players nodded off in the short 45 minutes. Simpson says: “I thought at the time: The boys are tired, we could use the time better. But maybe subconsciously it made a difference.”
The approach was less squeamish nine years later: When EVZ was the favorite 3-0 down against Rapperswil-Jona in the quarterfinals, President Roland Staerkle angrily threw wooden blocks around in a restaurant on Zugerberg. Simpson had them collected and placed under the players’ bench during games. Zug shot the series; In 38 years of play-offs, this has only happened five times after such a deficit.
A new champion will be chosen by April 30th at the latest, the successor to Geneva/Servette, who failed early on. The playoffs will create new heroes and create legends. Sean Simpson is right when he says: Where would Swiss ice hockey be without its fifth season?