New SCB boss – Adventures with Johan Lundskog

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The big world of ice hockey. Or do you know the Toronto Rattlers Tour Team? aDr DrWhich Bradford Rattlers? Bim NSJohan Lundskog ended his football career as a defender at the age of 22 the last one He started as a coach a year later.

Little world of ice hockey. Because the new SCB coach already had Swiss buddies at both places. And not just any. Patrick Bloch of Davos, CEO of Swiss ice hockey and a former NFL quarterback, was a member of a college team in 2004/05 who primarily played away games against other college teams – the itinerant team. Kloten goalkeeper Dominic Neveller took up Lundskog’s experience at Bradford after eight years as head coach in the GMHL Junior League in Ontario.

Patrick Bloch: Lundskog over and over again

While Joe Thornton, Rick Nash and Niklas Hagman came to Davos in the closing season, HCD Junior Bloch went in the opposite direction. There was no place in the first team, Bloch’s desire for an adventure in North America was great. His teammate at the time, Justin Krueger, along with his father, Ralphs Connections, helped him find a place on the itinerant team. Team leader, who also immediately took the Blochs? Lundskog.

The Swede was already a tactical thinker when he was a young player, Bloch recalls. “If you had asked me at the time: I would have rated him more as a future coach than as a general manager.” And did we say “the little world of ice hockey” before? The paths of Bloch and Lundskog crossed again. In 2016, the managing director of HC Thurgau wanted to direct the Swede to Switzerland as an assistant to … Christian Wohlwend. It didn’t work because the financially clumsy B-League could only make 30,000 francs a year, Lundskog thought, but then had to accept that they would. Normal does not work. But Wolfende was so impressed with this connection that he made the Swede his assistant at Davos three years later.

Dominic Neville: Too late by one year

We Stick With It: The Big World of Hockey? Little world of hockey! From 2014 to 2016 the goalkeeper for Blochs HC Thurgau was Dominic Neveller. From which club did the man move from Zurich to eastern Switzerland? Bradford Rattlers, of course. Neville also searched for an adventure in North America and found it in no time. It’s been a successful season in Canada. But to really make history, Nyffeler was a year behind at Bradford. The Lundskog team had a rarity in ice hockey, a perfect season: 42 games, 42 wins.

Nyffeler remembers how wide the gap in the GMHL between good and bad teams was and “Stängeli” was the order of the day. And he remembers Lundskog, whose exemplary qualities as a coach at that time shined. “Of course it’s hard to compare his role on this team and his role in SCB,” says Nyffeler. But when he heard from coach Lundskog how well he was able to respond to the players in Davos and this strength Moreover He is already playing in Bern. Or how the Swede brings the driest humor in the midst of drier tactical analyzes without warning. Then this sounds very familiar to the goalkeeper from Kloten after eight years: “A very team person, funny and a coach with great experience from a tactical point of view.”