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Lars Leuenberger replaces Antti Törmänen, who has cancer, in Biel. Photo: trapezoidal
Eismeister Zaugg
Lars Leuenberger: a master coach takes over temporarily at EHC Biel
Lars Leuenberger is the new trainer at EHC Biel. He signed a contract until the end of the season. The 2016 SCB Master Trainer is the perfect solution for Bieler. And the SCB cannot replace it.
It’s a fact: Lars Leuenberger (45) has signed with Biel as a new manager until the end of the season. Lars Leuenberger came close to moving to Biel once before. But on December 11, 2017, Antti Törmänen (49) succeeded Mike McNamara (71). Lars Leuenberger now replaces Antti Törmänen during convalescent leave.
Can Lars Leuenberger (45) be a coach? Of course you can be a coach. Very good. The way he led the SCB from eighth place to the championship title in the spring of 2016, with a victory in game five in Lugano, is written in gold letters in the SCB history book. On December 18, 2015, he took over the team that had miserably failed and fired NHL band general Guy Boucher.
But as it is already clear by now that Kari Jalonen will be the coach for next season (2016/17), Lars Leuenberger’s masterful career as a coach will not continue. He will remain with the SCB in other functions (strategic sports director, scout, assistant). Once SCB, always SCB. So it seems. But now Lars Leuenberger is leaving the club after 14 years.
So the question is not whether Lars Leuenberger can train. The question is another: Can coach Lars Leuenberger out of the Fuchsbaus SCB?
Since the brother of ZSC sporting director Sven Leuenberger ended his career at Ambri in the spring of 2006 after 489 National League games (212 points) for SCB, Gottéron, Basel and Ambri, he has worked in a wide variety functions exclusively in SCB. He coaches various youth teams and is an assistant head coach several times. This season he should have been helping Don Nachbaur.
But only: can he train outside the protective walls of the capital? If he can. For Biel it is even the perfect solution. Lars Leuenberger knows our hockey, he knows sports director Martin Steinegger, he knows Biel’s DNA, and he’s so sure he doesn’t have to hang out with the general. In other words: you are so confident that you will respect the special family culture in Biel and will also be able to cope with the special situation around Antti Törmänen. The Finnish coach has to suspend his position for six months with convalescent leave.
There is one more question: can the SCB without Lars Leuenberger? Here the answer is also clear: no. As an assistant, he would have been an important support for head coach Don Nachbaur (61). The new SCB coach doesn’t know our hockey yet. Yeah, he wasn’t even that professional trainer at that level. Now he’s losing what is probably the most loyal and competent assistant on our hockey team. Lars Leuenberger terminated his contract with SCB and signed it in Biel until the end of the season. A return to Bern is not planned.
Alex Reinhard (46), who has just signed up as a second assistant, brings a lot of experience to Bern (most recently as head coach at La Chaux-de-Fonds and the Ticino Rockets). But he doesn’t have the charisma of a master coach and he also doesn’t have many years of experience in the inner workings of Switzerland’s largest hockey company. He cannot replace Lars Leuenberger. Don Nachbaur has now gotten a little lonelier in Bern.
