Olympics: Team Switzerland 2022

[Hinterland]

Why are other countries still flying in their ex covid cases while ours will remain back home? SIHF being cheap or yet another episode of Fischer idiocy?

 

[Eye of Ra]

malgin played today. i thought he was out for the tournament

 

[BruinLVGA]

Aaaand we're back! At last a good game.

 

[jonas2244]

Demonstrates how thin the line between winning and loosing can be at that level.

 

[Speyer]

Disenchanting tournament for us. Not good enough for a medal run, not bad enough to trigger some much needed reforms. On we go as usual...

 

[Jon Riley]

I've always been ok with Fischer's job, I think he brought a pretty needed change of mentality and a quite refreshing style of hockey. That said, his time has probably run its course by now. I cannot see how he can bring whatever it is that's needed to to the last step and finally win the clutch matches.
This time the elimination came because of horribly amateurish single mistakes in a very well played match, not much to blame on Fischer but here we are again talking about a disappointing tournament.
The team is also rather old, so time to start anew, maybe?

 

[SwissGrog]

Fischer does tend to rely to the same player that to me are very .....not gritty. They look so "good boys" but are not smart. We don't have smart, capable player with grit. And Fischer kind of killed the competition to get into the Swiss Roster because he is not looking at what players are doing in the league. "International Experience" does not count for sh*t if you lose all the time internationally, aside from some exception when the NHLers are here.

We have a problem scoring goals. Of the first 18 top goal scorer of the league this year, only 4+1 were in the Swiss roster: Vermin, Malgin, Andrighetto, Mottet. The +1 is Thürkauf that was last minute replacement of Senteler.
Many of the "international expert" disappointed.
We need to increase competition and give a shot to the guys who are hot at the right moment, and not simply calling the old friends club.

 

[stv11]

Fischer does tend to rely to the same player that to me are very .....not gritty. They look so "good boys" but are not smart. We don't have smart, capable player with grit. And Fischer kind of killed the competition to get into the Swiss Roster because he is not looking at what players are doing in the league. "International Experience" does not count for sh*t if you lose all the time internationally, aside from some exception when the NHLers are here.

We have a problem scoring goals. Of the first 18 top goal scorer of the league this year, only 4+1 were in the Swiss roster: Vermin, Malgin, Andrighetto, Mottet. The +1 is Thürkauf that was last minute replacement of Senteler.
Many of the "international expert" disappointed.
We need to increase competition and give a shot to the guys who are hot at the right moment, and not simply calling the old friends club.

I feel quite the opposite as we've seen Fischer take tough decisions way more regularly than previous coaches. He doesn't hesitate to cut players who have previous international experience for newcomers, or to recall players who have struggled previously when they hit their form again (see Senteler/Thürkauf or Hollenstein). He even took Bertaggia to the WC 3 years ago. Many of the current team are players who got their first international experience with Fischer, some like Mottet or Simion as recently as last year. It's hard to take newcomers to the Olympics anyway, you don't have a training camp with 2 games a week like at the WC to test who's currently in the best shape.

Honestly the team selection was fine, the only player I would really question is Fora who I think never came close the his 2018 level again. Who would you have taken to Beijing?

 

[SwissGrog]

Who would you have taken to Beijing?

I did quite like the unbiased, stat-based selection from the leading advanced stats site of Switzerland, nlicedata:
https://nlicedata.com/#!/subs/article?id=2022-Team-Switzerland-Offense

They provide good reasoning on the various choices. I understand some of the player may not be available, but that was a good roster, with an unbiased structure to it based on advanced stats.
Here the defense:
https://nlicedata.com/#!/subs/article?id=2022-our-Team-Switzerland

Personaly, I just don't really like Haas because it's the guy who is just averagely good in normal games, and always do some stupid mistake in important games (see 1-0 for finland). I just cannot trust him, and this year has been not good stats-wise, just 6 goals projeted to 8 for 44 games, it is half of its past season. Something happened mentally.

 

[stv11]

I did quite like the unbiased, stat-based selection from the leading advanced stats site of Switzerland, nlicedata:
https://nlicedata.com/#!/subs/article?id=2022-Team-Switzerland-Offense

They provide good reasoning on the various choices. I understand some of the player may not be available, but that was a good roster, with an unbiased structure to it based on advanced stats.
Here the defense:
https://nlicedata.com/#!/subs/article?id=2022-our-Team-Switzerland

Personaly, I just don't really like Haas because it's the guy who is just averagely good in normal games, and always do some stupid mistake in important games (see 1-0 for finland). I just cannot trust him, and this year has been not good stats-wise, just 6 goals projeted to 8 for 44 games, it is half of its past season. Something happened mentally.

Interesting read, thanks for that. I like the concept of using unbiased data to suggest a roster, but I think there are some flaws to their methodology. First of all, it's based on league play, and international hockey is whole other beast. To succeed at the Olympic or WC level you need to be able to keep up with the superior pace and intensity, and some players with good offensive skills but limited skating are usually useless for the national team (see Julien Sprunger's international career for an obvious example). As a regular Lugano watcher I feel I can easily comment on Fazzini. Yes, he improved tremendously this year, he's much more active than he used to be and no longer just a player with a great shot. But still, he would be way below average skating wise at the Olympics and probably unable to use his offensive skills because of it, as we saw earlier this season at the Deutschland cup. The article mentions that Mottet could take his spot, and it's exactly what happened as Mottet is much faster. They also mention Moser as a defensive specialist, but fail to consider his play around the net, an aspect the team would have been seriously lacking without Meier and Niederreiter. They also stick to the concept of top 6/bottom 6, something that would have been valid 15 years ago but sounds outdated in modern hockey. A team like Switzerland should at least work with a top 9 and a more defensive minded 4th line, as has been the case early in Fischer's tenure, but lately even the 4th line has brought some offensive production (see Scherwey-Bertschy-Praplan last year), so players who can provide both offensively and defensively get consideration over pure defensive specialists like Suri. Lastly, it doesn't account for the value of players who can fit several roles. A guy like Vermin, for example, can play both center and winger, and has experience in both offensive and defensive roles, which considerably raises his value for a tournament where you have to be able to fill the roster spots of players lost through injuries.

I've made that point a few times already in those thread. To me, club performances alone is a bad predictor of performances in international tournament. You also have to consider if a player's skillset will work in international hockey, and of course take into account how well he did previously for the national team. Only by combining those 3 factors you can have a good idea of whether a player should be taken to a tournament.

But all things considered, I don't think nlicedata's selection is too different to the actual roster. They agree on the top two goalies and mention 7 of the 8 defensemen who made it, only missing Fora who in my opinion was the most questionable one. The big difference is at forward, but they still agree on 7 names (it would have been 8 had they known that Hofmann was available), and several of the actual team selection were mentioned as possibilities (Mottet, Thürkauf who they failed to consider as a winger for some reason, Moser who they see as a pure defensive specialist without accounting for his play around the net). Herzog, Vermin and Simion are the only forward not named as possibilities in the article actually.

In the end, this team's issues was lack of offensive production, most notably from guys like Andrighetto and Hofmann who would have made the team anyway, some bad puck luck (own goals and shots on the post), and individual mistakes by players who nlicedata would have also taken (Haas and Müller on Finland's first goal, Alatalo on the second, Frick on the third). Some I think that my point that team selection wasn't an issue is still valid.