Pius Suter Returns With The ZSC Lions: Is Too Much Talent Becoming A Curse?

Meanwhile, the Zurich-based company has not only rejoined Pius Suter to the team. With the talented 19-year-old Marco Rossi, they have signed a second striker who only spends his time out in Zurich for the start of the NHL. Why this change of opinion? Bottom line: the ZSC Lions train players in exemplary ways, including Pius Suter and Marco Rossi. But at the top of the performance pyramid, with the first team, only victory counts. Then everything is done for victory. Then Pius Suter and Marco Rossi are temporarily summoned.

This uncompromising attitude characterizes large sports organizations. Nor is it much different at Bayern Munich. After the two embarrassing losses to Zug (3: 6 and 2: 8), Sven Leuenberger has no choice but to add Pius Suter and Marco Rossi to the team. If he hadn’t, he would have ignored the winning mentality, the DNA of his organization.

So far Pius Suter has stayed in shape with the GCK Lions (6 games / 5 points). This commitment was limited to the end of October. The official reason for Sven Leuenberger’s move to the Hallenstadion sounds like this: “Now Pius has expressed the desire to play in the National League again to prepare even better for the NHL season. And since he’s one of us, we’d like to see Pius again in the ZSC jersey. “

Since the beginning of time, athletic directors – in the NHL the general managers – have repeatedly succumbed to the allure, the seductive eroticism of offensive talent. What the ZSC Lions were in the fall of 2020, the Colorado Avalanche were in the fall of 2003. An interesting and informative comparison.

Colorado won the Lord Stanley Cup in 1996 and 2001. In the spring of 2003, an embarrassing first-round elimination against Minnesota and the resignation of goalkeeper titan Patrick Roy follows. But now it should be enough for the final triumph again. It is the last season with a free market economy and unlimited shopping opportunities. After the 2003/04 season, team owners will enforce the salary restriction.

Colorado general manager Pierre Lacroix has put together the best team in club history. The already formidable storm with captain Joe Sakic, Alex Tanguay, NHL top scorer Peter Forsberg and NHL top scorer Milan Hejduk is complemented by superstars Paul Kariya and Teemu Selänne. No more offensive firepower is possible. The Canadian and the Finn don’t move from Anaheim to the Rocky Mountains for money. The two friends want to get the Stanley Cup first and foremost. Paul Kariya accepts 88 percent fewer wages than before in Anaheim. The hockey bible “The Hockey News” writes about team strengths: “Offense, offense and more offense.” The power play is even hailed as “the best of all time on paper.”

This offensive improvement is intended to compensate for the only weakness: while offense received the top rating of “A +” from “Hockey News” and defense remains “A,” goalkeeper David Aebischer, Patrick Roy’s successor, only received one C”. “Qualified. Additionally, the ZSC Lions will also make Ludovic Waeber, a goalkeeper trained by Gottéron, No. 1 in fall 2020.

Today we know: it did not work. In the playoffs, the lights go out in the second round against San José. David Aebischer is not the problem (92.20 percent playoff catch rate). The acclaimed storm is just a gentle breeze against San José with 7 goals in 6 games. One game is lost 0: 1, one is won 1: 0. Teemu Selänne and Paul Kariya are playing the weakest season of their great careers, not scoring a single goal in the playoffs and leaving Denver after just one year. Since then, Colorado has never come close to the Stanley Cup and has missed the playoffs eight times to date.

What Colorado was then, the ZSC Lions are even more so after the temporary employment of Pius Suter and Marco Rossi: an offensive team that is almost incredibly well endowed, that also wants to be champion again three years after the last title. Yes, never since the introduction of the playoffs (1986) has so much offensive talent been gathered in a locker room. Not even in Lugano.

An NHL first-round draft, 11 Swiss national forwards (7 of them with World Cup experience) plus three first-class foreign forwards. A “dream team”. “The Hockey News” would say the same of the qualities that then of Colorado: “Offensive, offensive and more offensive.” 15 stars who have to share twelve places in the ZSC attack. At first glance, an enviable situation for manager Rikard Grönborg. In fact, too much offensive talent is more likely to drive a coach to despair than too little. With so much talent, who still makes sense for game systems, tactics, and discipline? Alone.

So the example of Colorado, 17 years later, explains a bit of the current difficulties facing the ZSC Lions. Too strong an offensive orientation can seriously upset the already difficult balance between attack and defense, between play and work, between discipline and creativity, between self-confidence and arrogance, and between selfishness and team spirit, and thus locker room chemistry. Even with an impeccable work ethic.

In Colorado, the maximum offensive weaponry did not work almost 20 years ago. Different times, same problem: at the Hallenstadion, at least in autumn 2020, it doesn’t work either: four defeats and a negative goal difference after 11 games. 3.27 goals conceded per game. It was 2.48 last season. And things aren’t going any better up front, either: 3.18 hits per game. It was 3.32 last season. The curse of too much offensive talent.

We do not know if the 2020/21 season can be played until the end. If all goes according to plan, Pius Suter and Marco Rossi will switch to the NHL in Chicago and Minnesota in December. So what has his guest performance brought to the ZSC Lions? First: regardless of athletic success, an enrichment for the entire league, an increase in the value of entertainment, and second, a cheap excuse. If the people of Zurich don’t get the title, you can say: if Suter and Rossi had stayed until the end of the season, we would have become champions.

And fans will love to believe it.