NHL star Niederreiter sounds the alarm for Nati: ‘We are not as good as we think’

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Personally, Nino Niederreiter (31) is doing well. His Winnipeg Jets are one of the current top teams in the NHL and he recently extended his contract for three years for twelve million dollars.

But when he thinks about Swiss ice hockey, the Chur native no longer sees the prospects as bright as he once did, as he revealed to the “NZZ”. Niederreiter is very concerned and sounds the alarm.

“We have to be careful that we are not overtaken left and right. The Slovaks have done an excellent job, as shown by the results at the Junior World Championships. Germany is making enormous progress. I feel like we allow ourselves to be blinded and that we are not as good as we think we are. The expectation is now that we will reach the semi-finals at the World Cup every year. But if you look at the balance of power, that is not the reality,” says the silver World Cup hero from 2013 and 2018.

“Not much has happened since Hischier”

Niederreiter sees numerous reasons for this, including that the Swiss has struggled in recent NHL drafts: “Not much has happened since Nico Hischier was number 1 in 2017.” In fact, the only Swiss first-round draft pick since that year was Lian Bichsel (number 18, Dallas Stars) in 2022, and hardly any Swiss were drafted in the later rounds either. In addition, the number of NHL exports has shrunk from 16 to 10 and the careers of the two figureheads Roman Josi (33) and Niederreiter will no longer last forever.

For Niederreiter, developments in the National League are also partly responsible for the negative trend: “It is a very attractive league, a beautiful, functioning product. But in my opinion the National League thrives not least on the quality of the foreigners, on paying the highest wages in Europe and bringing in the best players. I’m not sure how much the Swiss benefit from the National League. Perhaps you should also ask yourself whether 14 teams is really the right competition size. But we’re probably too stubborn for that; “Everyone thinks too narrowly in their own garden, that is a typical Swiss problem.” (just now)

Source : Blick