EHC Biel in the National League: Potential despite significant departures

Summer is a time of hope in ice hockey. In the National League, from Ajoie to Zug, there is hope that everything will get better. Here a brilliant new coach, there a promising transfer. Always spiced up with the pep of marketing: This will be our year, now is the time to buy a season ticket.

This year, EHC Biel is something of an antithesis to this mechanism. The 2023 finalist entered the season severely weakened after several team pillars moved on: Mike Künzle to Zug, Yannick Rathgeb to Freiburg and Beat Forster into the sunset of retirement. “We are in a phase of renewal and need patience,” says sports director Martin Steinegger. You rarely hear this expressed so clearly in an industry where time is a precious commodity because failure can very quickly leave you without a job. No matter what merits are in the palmarès.

But Biel works differently, and there is impressive continuity in the key positions: Steinegger, a native of Biel, has been with the club since 2008, and CEO Daniel Villard has been there since 2003. The two manage the club with care. And do not revise their opinion after every defeat.

If no billionaire falls in love with this club, the budgets of the top teams will remain utopian in the long term

Especially not after the 1:3 defeat against champions ZSC at the start of the season on Tuesday. Biel’s second-line center was Jérémie Bärtschi, a 22-year-old talent who has been regularly loaned to the Swiss League over the past three years. His nomination in such a prominent position was due to injury concerns, but it shows in an exemplary manner how much substance currently separates Biel from the top teams.

CEO Villard sees this pragmatically, saying: “We don’t need to compare ourselves with ZSC today, it’s a club with completely different resources. Our goal must be to get the most out of our opportunities.” The financial differences will continue in the long term – Villard expects that the club will be able to generate a maximum of one million francs in additional funds in the medium term. He says: “The jumps are getting smaller. There are limits to what is economically possible in the city and region of Biel.”

Unless a billionaire falls madly in love with the EHC, the club will not be able to manage a budget like the top teams Zurich, Lausanne and Geneva in the future.

If Biel wants to get back to the top, it will have to find other ways. At least the club might have found the right coach for that. The outsider held up well against ZSC, impressing with its straightforward, fast-paced hockey; the ideas of the new coach Martin Filander seem to suit this team much better than those of his predecessor Petri Matikainen, who was fired in February.

Filander is 43, reminds a bit of a sociology student and has a lot of experience in guiding underdogs: under his leadership, the tiny Swedish club Oskarshamn regularly annoyed the big teams in the league in recent years. Until the financial limits could no longer be concealed and the club was relegated in the spring.

Damien Brunner’s wish for eternal youth: “It’s a pity I’m not ten years younger”

Under Filander, Biel plays in a similar way to the successful coach Antti Törmänen, who resigned from his position in spring 2023 after losing the play-off final against Geneva/Servette due to cancer. One person who is already praising Filander is the veteran Damien Brunner. The 38-year-old striker says: “He fits in with us. He is a very good communicator who knows how to teach players something. We need that now. We are no longer good enough to live off talent alone. The days are better organized, we are making progress.”

Filander is not the only new signing that Brunner is enthusiastic about: there is also Lias Andersson, a Swedish attacker. He was selected seventh in the 2017 NHL draft, but never found luck with the New York Rangers. Brunner says: “This is one of the best transfers in recent years. It’s a shame I’m not ten years younger. He is so strong that it could have happened like it did with Josh Holden . . .” Alongside the Canadian Holden, Brunner was the league’s top scorer at EV Zug in 2012. Holden, 46, ended his career in 2018 and is now the head coach of HC Davos.

Biel needs a duo that can score whenever they want, like Brunner/Holden did back then, especially now, at the start of the season. The most important center and captain Gaëtan Haas will probably not be able to play again for at least ten days, and the Finnish marksman Toni Rajala was injured against ZSC. Biel no longer has the squad depth to be able to compensate for such significant losses.

It could be a tricky start to the season for this team – it would not be surprising if manager Steinegger had to remind the fans a few more times in the coming days of his request for patience.