With no prospects at the bottom of the National League table

When coach Christian Wohlwend was asked in the summer whether he thought HC Ajoie was playing in the right league, he replied: “We are in the right place in the National League. The club is growing, the people are having fun. Why shouldn’t we play in the NL?”

Three weeks after the start of the championship there is not much joy to be felt. Ajoie is at the bottom of the table, has lost all its games and has both the weakest attack and the worst defense. Wohlwend says: “We are currently far away and not competitive. With our current personnel situation, it is almost impossible to meet other NL teams on an equal footing.”

Seven defeats in a row are potential grounds for dismissal for any coach in this league; It is surprising that the Wohlwend club did not say “au revoir” after the 5-0 defeat against Bern on Tuesday. The Engadine was “pardoned,” wrote “Le Matin.” One can ask oneself whether a dismissal would not be tantamount to redemption. Because sticking to Wohlwend can hardly be interpreted as anything other than an admission by sports director Julien Vauclair that the coach is not the problem with this team. But the quality.

In the spring, Ajoie was 26 points short of 12th place

Since the unexpected promotion in 2021, Ajoie has always finished qualifying in last place, missing 9, 18 and most recently 26 points to stay in the league early. The results were poor, regardless of whether the coach was Gary Sheehan, Filip Pesan, Julien Vauclair or Christian Wohlwend. You could also put Ralph Krueger, Arno Del Curto or Stanley Cup winner Jon Cooper on the board, and the performance of this team would hardly change significantly.

The incessant barrage of defeats is not surprising, Ajoie operates on a budget of 15 million francs for the entire club. This is a respectable, honorable amount, considering the structurally weak Jura region and the fact that Pruntrut has fewer than 7,000 inhabitants.

But Ajoie has by far the smallest budget in the league. Since promotion there has been little quality added to the squad; For the Swiss players, the village behind the seven Jura mountains is the very last turning point in their careers – if you don’t have to, don’t switch to Ajoie.

In a country that does not produce enough players to fill 14 National League teams (and therefore had to increase the number of foreigners eligible to play from four to six), these are poor conditions. Wohlwend puts it this way: “If everything, absolutely everything, goes for us and we play a perfect season, then maybe we’ll finish twelfth. Or eleventh. But anything else is not realistic today. And in the current situation, probably not tomorrow either.”

Wohlwend, 47, was aware of these circumstances when he took up the job in the summer of 2023. Shortly before, he had been released from HC Davos – the decent results could not outweigh his unfortunate public image. Perhaps Wohlwend should have been more patient in looking for the next challenge instead of going to Ajoie. But the market for Swiss trainers is manageable – and practically non-existent abroad. It’s understandably difficult for Wohlwend to turn down offers.

Maybe he also hoped to be able to do more. But the consequence of the economic limits is that there are hardly any Swiss under contract who would have a regular place elsewhere in the National League. An exception is the striker Thibault Frossard, an identification figure – he runs his own sports shop in Glovelier. The 31-year-old is one of the few players who grew up in their own youth; The club is not represented at the highest level in the U20 and U17 age groups. But Frossard is suffering from a thigh injury and has only played two games. And it won’t be operational on weekends either. Wohlwend says: “We simply cannot compensate for such failures.”

Promotion coach Gary Sheehan was only fired in 2021/22 after 18 defeats in a row

As an immediate measure, Ajoie invited Finnish defender Kristian Näkyvä, who was recently hired in Davos, to a trial training session on Wednesday. It should be the last measure to support the coach before the well-known mechanisms take effect and Wohlwend is bid farewell with best wishes. He says: “I have never felt so much appreciation from a board of directors as I did with Ajoie. And never before has there been so much trust from a sports director as here. But I have no illusions, everyone knows how the business works. If you get hit eight, nine, ten times, then you have to do something. And then it hits the coach.”

Ajoie has already demonstrated a high level of endurance: in 2021/22 the team set a negative National League record with 19 consecutive lost games; The promotion coach Sheehan only had to leave after the 18th defeat.

There is still hope for a turnaround, on Friday Ajoie welcomes EHC Kloten, the leader who also claimed a lot of fortune in his amazing climb up the table; His luck in competition will probably run out at some point.

Wohlwend says his team’s morale is intact: “They are professionals. It’s a privilege to be able to play in this league and have ice hockey as a job. We have a debt to the fans and sponsors. The least we can do is work our butts off.”

Can this one virtue be enough to stop the negative series: enthusiasm? If the misery continues, at some point the organization will have to ask itself again whether it wouldn’t be happier in the Swiss League. In general, the emotional debate that has been going on over the last few years as to whether 14 teams are not too many is likely to flare up again if a club is not competitive for as long as Ajoie. 3,595 spectators wanted to see the unequal duel with SC Bern on Tuesday. The next nasty winter is already looming in the Jura.