The best 4th line ever?

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“It doesn’t matter if the goalkeeper, the defender, the equipment manager or the coach scores the goals,” says Alessio Bertaggia (29) on MySports after he and his teammates from Geneva swept Biel 7-1 and reached the final series 3:2 ahead. The Ticino is right. Only: it was not goalkeeper Robert Mayer, who scored in the quarter-finals against Lugano, or coach Jan Cadieux, who scored the goals in the last two victories. It was not least the players of the 4th line.

On Thursday at the 3-2 victory in Biel, Marc-Antoine Pouliot (37) snapped the 1-1 and 3-2 coolly. True to the copy-and-paste principle, Alessio Bertaggia prepared the two goals in the same way with a dynamic run and a simple pass in depth.

In Saturday’s runaway victory, the 1-0, which knocked the Biel team off the track, and the 5-0 went to the native Canadian. Thanks to his Seeland wife Joëlle, Pouliot now holds a Swiss passport, extending his National League career by two seasons to date. And Bertaggia made it 7-1 with his first goal since October 15.

A luxurious trio for the 4th storm

Bertaggia, Pouliot and Deniss Smirnovs (24), the Latvian with a Swiss license who will move to Kloten next season, form perhaps the best 4th line ever seen in the Swiss play-offs. The fact that forwards of their skill class finish together on the fourth row and are only on the ice for between 8 and 10 minutes per game shows how luxuriously equipped this Geneva team is.

It wasn’t until the fourth game of the final series, when Vincent Praplan returned from injury, that Cadieux had them put together. She could be the final piece in the main puzzle. Servette has two match pucks, the first Tuesday in Biel. The first league title in the history of the club’s perennial runners-up (1966-69, 71, 2008, 10th and 21st runners-up) is within reach. For the first time in 50 years, when La Chaux-de-Fonds had won their sixth title in a row, the cup could end up in French-speaking Switzerland again.

Although Pouliot has been productive all season, scoring 13 goals in qualifying and 6 in the play-offs (2 in extra time), Bertaggia took a long time to get going after his transfer to Geneva. Only in the final was the fast striker seen as dynamic as in his best days in Lugano. In the play-offs he has the same number of points (4) as before in qualifying.

After two defeats in the final with Lugano, his first title is now in his name, so that father Sandro (6-times champion with the Bianconeri) is not the only one in the family who knows how to lift a trophy.

Source : Blick