The ZSC Lions and Genève-Servette can look back on a turbulent turn of the year. Now the last two Swiss champions are dueling for a place in the Champions Hockey League final.
15.01.2025, 05:00
15.01.2025, 07:03
SDA
One year after a team from the National League made its debut in the final and Genève-Servette triumphed, the final of the European club competition will once again feature Swiss players in 2025. The tournament tree has it that the defending champions from Geneva and the ZSC Lions will meet in the semi-finals.
The two clubs have certain parallels, as they started the new year with a new coach and are both in a creative crisis. However, the changes in the coaching staff were only made in one case for reasons of sporting failure. While Geneva deliberately made a personnel change by releasing Jan Cadieux on December 28, Marc Crawford's health-related resignation came as a surprise to ZSC just two days later.
The result was more or less the same: Both teams are still searching for their footing under new leadership. While the Lions have lost four out of five games in 2025, Servette's record of three wins from seven games after the Christmas and Spengler Cup break is also less than stellar.
Noticeable uncertainty
In both cases, the sporting directors opted for internal solutions. At ZSC, Marco Bayer, the previous coach of the GCK Lions farm team, didn't try to change much at all. But it seems as if the sudden change of coach has thrown the Zurich team, who started the year as leaders but have since fallen back to fourth place, off course.
The ease and self-confidence that characterized the Lions in the weeks and months before seem to have vanished. Suddenly everything is a cramp. Insecurity is palpable. Scoring goals is difficult. And the burden on the shoulders of key players such as Denis Malgin and Derek Grant is getting heavier and heavier.
Meanwhile, Geneva is doing everything in its power to avoid missing the playoffs again in the second year after its historic first championship title. However, Cadieux's previous assistants Yorick Treille and Rikard Franzén have so far failed to break the team's routine and bad habits. It does not seem out of the question that sporting director Marc Gautschi will revise his plan to end the season with the French-Swedish pairing.
At least Servette can count on its top scorer Sakari Manninen again for the European Cup games. The world and Olympic champion from Finland will have to sit out three more games in the National League, having already been suspended twice at the weekend after an incomprehensible outburst (he hit a referee in the back with a stick).
Direct duels speak in favor of the ZSC
As difficult as the Geneva team has found it in the domestic championship, their recent performances on the European stage have been just as convincing. Most recently, they remained unbeaten five times in a row in the Champions Hockey League. In the round of 16, they gave arch-rivals Lausanne (with an aggregate score of 12:4) no chance, just as they did against the German surprise team Bremerhaven (6:2) in the quarter-finals.
ZSC, winners of the previous competition in 2009, needed a real tour de force to advance to the semi-finals for the first time. The Zurich team had to overturn a three-goal deficit against German champions Eisbären Berlin in both the first and second legs.
If you take the last encounters with Servette as a reference, the Lions will nevertheless go into the semi-final first leg on Wednesday evening (20:15) as slight favorites. They have already emerged as narrow winners three times this season: 2:1 n.V., 3:1 and 3:2. Servette has now been waiting for a win in the direct duel between the champions of the last two years for six games.
No final in Geneva
ZSC has only one directive anyway: "We already said before the campaign: 'We want to be there until the end'," says captain Patrick Geering unequivocally. The experienced defender thinks it's a shame that he and his boys will be denied another road trip through Europe and that the Lions will face a familiar rival instead. But: "It's nice that a Swiss club will be in the final with this starting position," says Geering. "We're doing everything we can to make sure it's us."
Incidentally, a final on Swiss soil like the one a year ago in Geneva is possible again, but only if the ZSC Lions advance and Sparta Prague eliminates the "qualifying winners" Färjestad Karlstad in the other semi-final. The winner of the tenth edition of the Champions Hockey League will be crowned in a final game on February 18.
