Austria’s ice hockey miracle: quarter-final hopes with Swiss coaching duo

At the Ice Hockey World Championships in Prague, two Swiss teams are playing in Group A. On the one hand, Patrick Fischer’s all-star team, full of NHL players, qualified early for the quarter-finals despite their first tournament defeat in Sunday’s 3-2 defeat against Canada. On the other hand, Team Austria, which amazes spectators and opponents with the federal eagle on its chest.

The Austrians are full of players from the Swiss National League: The squad includes Kilian Zündel and Dominic Zwerger from HC Ambri-Piotta, Vinzenz Rohrer from the ZSC Lions, Bernd Wolf from EHC Kloten and Benjamin Baumgartner from SC Bern.

Marco Rossi also worked for the ZSC organization for several years before making the leap to North America and just played his first full NHL season with the Minnesota Wild. Peter Schneider once played half a season for EHC Biel. And former Kloten player David Reinbacher and Lausanne player Michael Raffl would actually also be part of the team. But they are injured and have canceled their participation in the World Cup.

The Swiss element is most pronounced on the bench: Roger Bader from Eastern Switzerland has been the head coach there since 2018, and the Graubünden legend Arno Del Curto is assisting him for the third time at a World Cup. The six-time HCD championship coach is now 67 years old and enjoying the benefits of retirement. Since he retired from the National League in 2019, he has only done what he likes. He has processed his life in a moving biography.

Coach as a favor – Del Curto has even been to La Chaux-de-Fonds

A few months after his resignation in Davos shook the Swiss ice hockey scene like a firecracker shook a cathedral, Del Curto was persuaded to make a short-term comeback to his heart’s club, the ZSC. His return sparked huge hype in Zurich, but things went horribly wrong. The Lions missed the play-offs with Del Curto.

Since then he has only stepped in for old companions as a favor. He did that at HC La Chaux-de-Fonds, where his former player Loïc Burkhalter was in charge. Now he is helping Austria, where his friend Roger Bader is in charge.

In Prague, Del Curto is a kind of phantom, at least in the media. He walks along the gang during matches and motivates the players as if he had never been away. In the so-called mixed zone, where coaches and players answer more or less intelligent questions from reporters after the games, the Swiss press has so far been waiting in vain for the Engadine. On Sunday after the Austrians’ 4-1 win against Norway, Del Curto spoke briefly by phone and asked for their understanding that he was not giving any interviews.

Who wouldn’t understand that, Arno Del Curto is no longer accountable to anyone. He enjoys the privileges of his legend. One might wonder why he was never available to the Swiss national team. After all, former players of his are also responsible there, namely coach Patrick Fischer and sports director Lars Weibel. But the attention that a commitment to Swiss Ice Hockey would bring would probably be too much for him. Del Curto obviously feels very comfortable in the tranquil environment of the Austrian team.

In any case, Del Curto seems to have lost none of the passion that makes him so unique. Ambri’s Dominic Zwerger said that Del Curto has a lot of personal conversations in the dressing room and on the bench: “He motivates and drives us on.” After the match against Norway, in which Zwerger scored one goal and assisted two more, Del Curto is said to have said to the winger: “That’s the Dominic that I love and who always annoyed me as an Ambri player in games against us.”

Del Curto is probably holding back from the press, not least out of respect for Roger Bader. The 59-year-old from Uzwil was for a long time what is referred to as a perpetual assistant in Switzerland. The proven ice hockey expert was the loyal assistant of Vladimir Jursinow in Kloten, Mike McParland in Freiburg and Christian Weber in Rapperswil-Jona before he took on tasks with the youth team and soon moved on to Austria. Bader has held various positions there for ten years now. At the beginning of his coaching career he assisted Del Curto at the old Zürcher SC.

When Bader became head coach in Austria, the local media greeted his nomination with skepticism. The Austrian journalists may have remembered the chaotic time of Ruedi Killias from Graubünden, who died in 2010 and who was once not a real support for their national team.

But Bader dispelled these doubts. The Austrians have been in the A group for three years. Relegation is not an issue in Prague either. The reporters from his adopted homeland listen to Bader reverently and patiently, just as Swiss journalists once hung on Ralph Krueger’s every word. On Sunday it took a full half hour before Bader finally had a moment to spare for his former companions from Switzerland. His media boss urged him to hurry up and say the team was waiting in the dressing room.

Head coach Roger Bader was annoyed by a headline a year ago

These are unusual moments for Bader. A year ago, he was hurt by the headline in a Swiss newspaper that wrote after relegation: “Arno Del Curto saves Austria”. On Sunday, Bader said: “There was another Swiss member of the gang who played a significant role in it. It would have been a matter of respect to mention that too.” This is probably the main reason why Del Curto is rare in the media.

Together, the two are well on their way to even making history. Only once in the new mode has the Austrian national team reached the quarter-finals at the A World Cup (1994 in Milan, where they ended up with a 10-0 debacle against Finland). The best results date back to the Ice Hockey Stone Age; In 1931 and 1947 the Austrians won bronze at the World Cup and were even European champions twice during that era.

Now, in Prague, they are fighting for the last place in the quarter-finals in a long-distance duel with Finland before the last group games. The Austrians will face Great Britain, who have already been relegated, and are hoping for support from the Swiss, who will conclude their preliminary round program against the Finns on Tuesday evening (game starts at 8:20 p.m.). Before Bader rushed to his team on Sunday, he said: “Maybe the Swiss will help us a little this time.”