If you compare to Finland, it took about 15 years to see an insurgence of new NHL players after the 1995 world championship. In other words, the 5-year-olds watching them win grew up. It could be the same case with Switzerland, now that they've had quite good success for a couple of years. Maybe in 2025-2030, there will be a major increase in Swiss NHLers.
But it kind of feels that Switzerland has achieved their success slightly differently - by having a competitive national league with a large amount of excellent foreign players that teach the Swiss players how to be a professional player. For example Finland has never really had something like that. If a North American players comes to Europe, they'll very rarely come to Finland. They'll go to Central Europe mostly. Luckily we have our own players to learn from, as many Finnish ex-NHLers return back to play their final professional years in Finland, or return here after they retire from the NHL. A huge amount of them go into coaching and training in our hockey academy. For example Teemu Selänne teaches young kids full-time(?) how to score goals, and Jere Lehtinen is very active in the national team. Saku Koivu and Miikka Kiprusoff own one of our nationa league teams, and so on. Jari Kurri is active in the national team and hockey federation.
