As title holders, Servette was only the fourth team in the play-off era not to make it into the top 8. Failure had been announced; there were too many construction sites in the Geneva collective.
Geneva/Servette on the ground, like the player Alessio Bertaggia here: The team often lacked freshness in the championship.
Salvatore Di Nolfi / Keystone
It’s remarkable how quickly things can move in sport. Less than three weeks ago, coach Jan Cadieux led Geneva/Servette to triumph in the Champions Hockey League, and in April 2023 he achieved the first championship title in the club’s history. And now, late on Saturday, sports director Marc Gautschi was asked whether Cadieux, soon to be 44, would still be Servette’s coach when the new season began in September.
Servette had just played 2-2 in Biel, which meant that the title holder did not make it into the last eight teams for only the fourth time in the forty-year history of the play-off mode. SC Bern had already suffered this disgrace in 2014 and 2020 as well as the ZSC Lions in 2019; The phenomenon of “master blues” is real. It’s a dangerous combination when a false sense of security mixes with tiredness and a hint of frugality.
There will be fresh blood at Servette in the foreign positions
In Servette’s case, failure was on the horizon. The Geneva team is the second oldest team in the league behind Ajoie. After last winter’s season for eternity, it seemed early on as if this collective was lacking freshness, physically and mentally. Last year’s top scorer Teemu Hartikainen sorely missed his departed strike partner Linus Omark, and the Finn’s goal production fell from 28 to 8 goals. Hartikainen has appeared similarly helpless “like a fish on land” in recent months, a local observer said during the season.
Defense chief Henrik Tömmernes, who had left for Frölunda, was missing everywhere, especially since his designated replacement Theodor Lennström missed two thirds of the qualification with an injury. And the performances of goalkeepers Gauthier Descloux and Robert Mayer were so dissolute that Servette hired Finnish national goalie Jussi Olkinuora on a temporary basis in December.
Compared to the previous season, Servette scored 45 fewer goals and received 15 more, a difference of 60 goals. The consequence was 10th place and going into the play-in. Biel was the final destination there, last year’s opponent in the final. “We didn’t squander our play-off chances today, but rather with the bad start to the season,” said sports director Gautschi, but that’s only partially true. Servette missed leads in both play-in games, even winning 2-0 on Saturday. Given how much routine this team has, it was surprising how little order there was to their game.
𝐋𝐚 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐀𝐢𝐠𝐥𝐞𝐬 in Biel. 🚨
The season ends at the Tissot Arena during this second Play-In match against Bienne. Thank you to all our supporters as well as the staff for the support throughout this 23-24 season 👏 pic.twitter.com/7VTHFpdcx2
— Genève-Servette HC (@officialGSHC) March 9, 2024
Interestingly, there is no change in the goalies
A long summer awaits the club – and a few changes. The 39-year-old Canadian Daniel Winnik will say goodbye to Geneva, and it won’t offend him if you say that he should have done so a year ago. In 39 games, Winnik only produced 13 points, and he never came close to reaching the speed that had once made him one of the most feared, roughest power wings in Europe in the National League. The contract of the almost 40-year-old center Valtteri Filppula, Finland’s only member of the triple gold club (Stanley Cup victory, Olympic and World Cup gold), will not be extended. The future of Sakari Manninen and Teemu Hartikainen is open.
Interestingly, there is no change in the goalie position, apart from the departure of temporary worker Olkinuora; Servette is once again relying on the Descloux/Mayer duo, who have been missing out on practically everything in the last few months. Mayer, 34, recently celebrated champion goalkeeper, played a season to forget, his defense rate was a desolate 86.82 percent. It’s astonishing that the national coach Patrick Fischer gave him preference over the established Leonardo Genoni in the lost World Cup quarter-finals in Riga in May 2023. Gautschi says: “It wasn’t easy for our goalies. We allowed the fewest shots in the league, but we had a lot of high-quality chances. It’s difficult for any goalkeeper to achieve good statistics.”
Actually, that’s the story of this Servette season: a lot of talent, little consistency, noticeably little stability. It is said that coach Cadieux was not always able to hide his frustration with the blatant fluctuations in performance, which led to tensions internally. Nevertheless, it is almost inconceivable that Cadieux will be farewelled: he has achieved too much in a short time. And Servette is too conservative with costs – the pressure to save money from the “Fondation 1890”, which controls both clubs, is also noticeable in the football section.
And yet: under the leadership of patron Didier Fischer, Geneva is now more successful than ever in major public sports. Champions League victory and championship title in ice hockey, European moments of glory as well as soft championship and cup winning dreams in football, where coach René Weiler manages to conceal the enormous budget deficits of the series champion YB.
And the prospects of success in ice hockey remain favorable despite the poor infrastructure. Practically all Swiss top performers are committed to the team for the long term, and after a few tweaks to the foreign positions, Servette will also be a force to be reckoned with next season.
Film about the Champions League victory of HC Geneva/Servette.
Youtube
EHC Biel is a potentially very dangerous quarter-final opponent for the ZSC Lions
It is not certain whether the same can be said about EHC Biel. The club is facing a mass exodus: at least six regular players will move on, including pioneer Beat Forster, who is ending his impressive career at the age of 41.
For the core that has carried this team further in recent years than most observers thought possible, this is the last dance. The Biel team also had a terrible season for long stretches – and fired coach Petri Matikainen three rounds before the end of the qualification. It seems as if the team can draw strength from this measure and also from the certainty that this is the last chance for the big hit.
From Monday onwards, Biel will duel with Ambri-Piotta as the clear favorite for the final play-off place. The winner will get a quarter-final rendezvous with the ZSC Lions. Biel would be a dangerous opponent for the sovereign qualification winners ZSC: Last season, the Zurich team failed without a hitch against this opponent in the semi-finals, and a year earlier they showed a lot of effort in the quarter-finals, which they won 4-3. In any case, ZSC coach Marc Crawford must be worried about how the Biel team has picked up speed with interim coach Martin Steinegger.