Damien Brunner is right with his anger speech

After EHC Biel’s 2-1 defeat at the ZSC Lions, long-time national player Damien Brunner’s heart bursts. He is upset about the miserable video images in the National League. And he’s absolutely right in his criticism.

An enrichment on and off the ice: the former league top scorer Damien Brunner.

Marcel Bieri / Keystone

Despite a mediocre performance, the ZSC Lions got the coach’s debut on Sunday night Marc Crawford won 2:1 against Biel. But the bare result does not tell the drama of this evening, at the end of which a Bieler gave one of the most remarkable interviews in the recent history of Swiss ice hockey: Forward Damien Brunner, former NHL professional and league top scorer in Zug 2012, has been for a decade a tremendous asset to this league. On the ice, because even at the age of 36 he is one of the most ripped off, most elegant scorers in Europe and can decide games on his own. And next to the ice, because he’s not afraid to speak the truth.

On Sunday it was time again. In an interview with “MySports” he broke out: “We had Corona, the bosses cried throughout the league because there was no money because the players were earning too much. Now we’re here, I don’t know how many coaching changes there have been this season. I don’t know if any team still has six foreigners in their squad, or if it’s already seven, eight, nine. But not a single stadium can manage to have a crappy camera on the blue line. Today it took another five minutes to find a frame. It is ridiculous. Something like that just doesn’t work.”

And later, when the cameras had long been switched off and just before the team car roared towards Biel, he said: “It’s unbelievable how unprofessional our hockey is in this regard.”

Damien Brunner’s anger speech on Sunday evening.

MySports

Gottéron coach Dubé: “It’s a damn amateur league”

Brunner was annoyed that Justin Azevedo’s goal in Zurich counted, even though the goal was probably preceded by an offside position. After studying the video for several minutes, the referees gave the score 2:1 – in their opinion, the images available to them had not provided any clear evidence. It often goes like this; Image quality and/or camera angles regularly do not allow for judgment. It therefore happens again and again that coaches take an offside challenge, lose it because of unusable pictures and the team is also punished with a two-minute penalty for the rejected challenge in addition to a presumably irregular goal, because the regulations stipulate it.

It is an unworthy spectacle that has become a substantial image problem for Swiss ice hockey. “I’ll just say one thing: It’s a damn amateur league,” Gottéron’s coach Christian Dubé was angry in October for the same reason as Brunner.

The problem has been recognized for a long time, and yet nothing changes. League director Denis Vaucher recently told Blick that converting the 14 National League stadiums would cost almost a million francs: “Of course it is possible to install additional cameras, but these signals would then also have to be in the TV feed be taken over. This requires additional channels and would significantly increase TV production costs. This is not provided for in the existing TV contracts.” Vaucher also said: “This challenge is in our rules because the sports directors decided it that way. It was introduced to be prepared for blatant wrong decisions, clear offsides that were overlooked, but not for millimeter decisions. »

Frequent coach changes, many foreigners, bad contracts

Vaucher and the clubs make it easy with this argument, because Brunner is absolutely right with his fundamental criticism: the clubs find the necessary funds for every conceivable expense. With Ajoie, Bern, Lausanne, Lugano and the ZSC Lions, five teams have changed coaches. Only Davos and the SCL Tigers have not redeemed more than six foreigner licenses.

The wage level in the league is still very high. There are deals that have been so grotesquely badly negotiated that it’s hard to believe they weren’t a skit invented by Mel Brooks. Probably the most absurd example is that of Michael Hügli, a striker that Lausanne poached from Biel. The 27-year-old will earn 525,000 francs per season until 2027, in 30 games this season he has produced three assists and was already sitting in the stands. It’s not his fault he was offered this contract, why shouldn’t he have signed it? But the example shows: the money for the additional cameras, for a league that doesn’t expose itself to ridicule with unsightly regularity, would be available. You just wouldn’t have to throw it out the window with both hands.

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