What is behind the ice hockey fairy tale of Kloten

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If someone had said before the season that Kloten would qualify for Lugano and Lausanne and top nine would have been asked if they had had too much to drink. If anyone had said that back in October after the promoted team managed a 6-0 defeat to Ambri, a 7-0 defeat to Davos and a 9-1 defeat to Fribourg to finish bottom of the table, they would have declared Completely insane.

The beginning was not only sporty under an unfortunate star. The dismissal announced before the start of the season and a bizarre TV appearance at the first home game of sports director Patrik Bärtschi initially caused some irritation around the club. But he didn’t get lost in it.

Calm Mitchell to excited Bärtschi

Of course, Bärtschi can now also take a big part of this success, he has put together this team for the most part. On November 1, he was then replaced by German-Canadian Larry Mitchell, who, with his winning and calm demeanor, was able to pass ideally. The organization gave what it needed at the time.

At the same time, there was a strong upward trend in the sporting field. Nice victories could be celebrated, the foreigners (Ang, Aaltonen, Routsalainen, Ekestahl Jonsson and goalie Metsola) became attractions in the competition, but it was also amazing how the Swiss core, formerly playing in the Swiss league, gathered around Marchon, Meyer, Kellenberger and Steiner founded. In addition, young people such as Reinbacher, Lindemann or Ramel were also successfully promoted.

Remained calm in difficult moments

In January Kloten was even ahead of champion Zug with a 7th place in the ranking. The climber approached the pre-playoffs with great strides, even a direct playoff qualification was suddenly in sight. “We lived beyond our means and everyone knew that”, Mitchell looks back.

A bad February turned everything upside down. Meanwhile, even the competition. And when the Zürcher Unterländer actually dropped to 11th place one lap before the end, it seemed that the little one in the group of the big ones would eventually have to leave empty-handed. But with a great 4:1 victory on Saturday in Davos, the Kloteners took both Lausanne and Lugano. “We have always remained calm on the management floor and knew who we are and where we came from,” says Mitchell of the recipe for success.

Tomlinson’s successor to the DEL?

As good as Kloten was no longer a climber in modern times. There aren’t enough superlatives in the dictionary to appreciate the merits of head coach Jeff Tomlinson, who will retire after this season for health reasons. “The coaching staff always found a way to push the right buttons,” Mitchell said, impressed. Tomlinson deceived the greats way back in 2021 when he led the SCRJ Lakers through pre-playoffs to the playoff semi-finals. The coup with Kloten is rated even higher.

According to the German media, Tomlinson’s successor should be Canadian Gerry Fleming, who created the Kloten fairytale in the DEL and formed a playoff candidate from the newly promoted Löwen Frankfurt. Mitchell says: “We haven’t signed a new coach yet. Our whole focus is on the upcoming games.”

Rightly so. Now Kloten also wants to annoy SC Bern in the pre-playoffs from Tuesday! “We tasted blood,” defender Nicholas Steiner explains, which sounds like a declaration of war. Sports director Mitchell provides a second: “In a best-of-three series, the outsider is much more likely to cause surprises than in a best-of-seven series.” Will the next chapter of Kloten’s success story actually be written next week?

Source : Blick