NHL lock-out is on

Those are exciting times in Swiss for fans and teams. But in different ways. At 6 a.m Sunday(local time) the NHL lock-out started,

On the fans side the word is excitement. Patrick Biolley, Fribourg-Gotteron fan and chef-writer for "lebronmeetspeyton.wordpress.com"  says: "I'm pretty excited to see some of the best players in the world in our National League. The only question is about the length of their journey in Switzerland. I don't think these players will impact the championship but this is gonna be amazing to watch them."

The team's sides is a different story, those that have financial resources like Bern, Zug, Davos, or Geneva, find the lock-out a good thing for the league. Lower teams like Ambri, Biel or Rapperswil don't find the situation that funny. It's almost one obligation these teams acquire NHL players to stay a competitive squad. But both sides agree "it will be great for fans".

Interviewed by Grégory Beaud( @GregBeaud20min) from newspaper 20 minutes, Canadian coach Chris McSorley says that Geneva will be one active team in the first days of market. He doesn't want to get caught by surprise like in the 2004 lock-out. In the other side Biel's coach Kevin Schläpfer says to same newspaper "For sure we will acquire a NHL player, we don't have much of a choice. Biel isn't the priority for the stars, so we have to wait a little bit longer than others. But we want to make pleasure to our fans".

Former Biel player and now journalist from newspaper "Journal du Jura", Cyrill Pasche(  @c9pasche) lived the two last lock-out (94, 2004) in a different way "The first lock-out was very special for me because it was the first time that i saw real NHL players. At the time we had no access whatsoever to internet or TV. So we didn't have a real knowledge about those players. Besides in Biel, Chris Chelios was the NHL superstar at that moment. At Rapperswil Doug Gilmour was also a huge superstar. In 2004 it was different, especially in Biel, at the time we played in LNB and the players that play with us were regular NHL players (Clymer, Wright). Even the LNA was different, with great players for sure but none with the charisma that Chelios or Gilmour had."

About the experience for Swiss players: "In 2004, young players that play with or against that kind of stars saw the finally the difference was not that big between the two worlds. Except maybe Thornton, Nash or Brière... and that give Swiss players the confidence they needed to think they also could play in NHL one day..."

 

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