Again, Switzerland cannot take advantage of a promising starting position. In Helsinki, the favored Swiss are defeated by the USA 0:3. The World Cup award to Switzerland for 2026 cannot make up for this renewed disappointment.
Crash landing in Helsinki: Pius Suter and Switzerland have a hard time with the USA.
Thursday was a bit like one of those semi-original Marvel movies where you can predict who will win in a familiar setting – but add a full-length storyline for entertainment purposes. Including the Olympic Games, the Swiss had lost their last three quarterfinals against Finland, Germany and Canada. What is bad when the coach declares that the push into the top eight is no longer enough. Like Patrick Fischer with the Swiss.
Switzerland made great progress under Fischer. But the quarterfinals have remained the same near-impossible hurdle they were under predecessors Ralph Krueger and Sean Simpson. With the difference that Switzerland no longer loses them as an outsider, but as a favorite.
The fourth end in a row followed in Helsinki on Thursday evening, this time against the USA, in a game before which almost everyone in and around the Swiss collective was so sure of victory that it made the sudden crash a bit more painful. Unlike in the World Cup quarter-finals in 2019 and 2021, Switzerland no longer gave up a lead in the final minute. The team robbed Thursday of some Hitchcock drama. But it didn’t make the ending any better either.
Switzerland conceded two random hits early on. The 0:1 was an own goal by the striker Calvin Thürkauf, at 0:2 almost five minutes later the attacker Adam Gaudette twice managed to snipe the puck in extremis in front of the goalkeeper Leonardo Genoni who rushed out. As always in the World Cup quarter-finals of the Fischer era, EVZ goalie Genoni was given preference over Reto Berra. And as so often, he played well, but without fortune.
The Swiss disappointed in the opening third, looking strangely passive, but their reaction was angry and determined. They created a number of chances and will have recalled converting an early 2-0 loss into victory in the group stage. But the USA are not France, but number 4 in the world, a team whose squad is made up of NHL players with a handful of exceptions and is not so badly equipped in defence.
Fischer’s premonition
It’s worth remembering in spite of all the disappointment. Switzerland were favorites on Thursday, but only slightly. You can lose against this American team, that’s no shame, and of course you can ask 1000 questions and formulate hypotheses. But you don’t have to analyze things that far: with a little less bad luck, Switzerland would have won this game. And would have met the Czech Republic in the semifinals in Tampere on Saturday.
Fischer seemed to have something of a premonition when he said on Tuesday after his seventh win in the seventh group game that things could go differently in ice hockey. That it happens that you lose games even though you were the better team. The comparison with the USA provided bitter confirmation of this.
World Cup 2026 as cold consolation
Once again, a mixed record remains from a World Cup tournament. This team played rousing, presentable offensive hockey for long stretches. It was not for nothing that the Swiss had the best attack of all 16 participants in the group phase with 34 goals. Again, the starting position was incredibly tempting, especially this year in the absence of consistent medal winners Russia. But, and this is also the reality: At the decisive moment, the team again failed to win a big game. After more than six years of coach Fischer’s work, this has become one of the distinguishing features of the teams he coaches.
Actually, it should have been a kind of celebration weekend for Swiss Ice Hockey, everything was done: On Friday at the congress of the world association IIHF, Switzerland will be awarded the 2026 World Cup in Freiburg and Zurich, it will be the first World Cup after the 2020 event was canceled due to the pandemic tournament on Swiss soil since 2009. And next to that, the national team, the young generation around Captain Nico Hischier, should have made positive sporting headlines by winning a medal. What remains now is the World Cup award, a very weak consolation – from a Swiss point of view, the film shown on Thursday evening has now been seen a few times too often.