Gottéron can write the most beautiful story of our hockey

Winners of the Spengler Cup on Tuesday, the Dragons are delivering a season full of twists and turns, which no one could have expected. What if they were to win a “real” title at the end of the year?

Klaus Zaugg

The term “romanticism” comes from the word “novel”. Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish Jeremias Gotthelf, is one of the movement’s most famous authors and his tales have made him popular around the world. There is a link with Gottéron. We could write a novel based on the turbulent history of this club and its magical triumph on Tuesday in the Spengler Cup.

The hockey players – paid like kings to play from time to time and not to work – get the departure of the big bad boss: Christian Dubé. The very friendly Patrick Emond then arrives. He lets his protégés play as they wish and does not force them to work constantly. Obviously, this doesn’t work in the long term. The magician Lars Leuenberger is therefore called to the rescue to encourage the people of Friborg to get moving. And now a miracle happens: Gottéron wins the Spengler Cup, the romantics’ competition. With Genève-Servette (2013, 2014) and Ambri (2023), only two teams in the modern era have won the Spengler Cup without previously winning a championship title. The Genevans nevertheless corrected the situation ten years later.

The Gottéron dream factory now has a cup to place in its trophy cabinet, and this is partly due to President Hubert Waeber. The latter achieved a real masterstroke. Never has a change of coach borne fruit so quickly and abundantly. Because we can say it: without this decision made on December 22, this fabulous success would not have been possible. From now on, each dismissal of a coach will be accompanied by a precise justification. What will we hear?

When Gottéron plays, dances, sings and laughs from September to March, the hockey temple is obviously full to bursting. It is also sometimes in April. However, during this period, the people of Friborg no longer play, no longer dance, no longer sing or laugh. Result: they do not win any titles. However, the Dragons have often had talent to hope to win championship trophies. But it is true that everything never came together perfectly. If Slava Bykow and Andreï Khomutov danced on the noses of opposing defenders with absolute class, at the time they lacked a solid defensive base.

The Gottéron for the 2024 end-of-year celebrations is undoubtedly the best-balanced Friborg team since its promotion to the National League in 1980. It is supported by a legion of veterans – Reto Berra (38 years old), Raphael Diaz (38 years old). ), Ryan Gunderson (39), Julien Sprunger (38) – still quite dashing in the fall of their careers. Better, they were not overworked during the first part of the season. The months under Patrick Emond were more like a summer camp. It could therefore be that the Fribourgeois are still fresh in the money-time, that is to say the play-offs. This is where it gets interesting. Because technically, and with the support of the hockey gods, Gottéron is good enough to win a first “real” title: that of the Swiss championship, a competition reserved for realists, and not romantics like the Dragons.

In addition, the new coach, Lars Leuenberger, knows how to do it. He’s not just good at the Spengler Cup. In 2016, he proved with Bern that he could also be champion. After this Davos fairy tale, he is already more popular in Freiburg than Roger Rönnberg, to whom he will serve as assistant next season. Imagine if he were to give up his place with two trophies won in quick succession: a Spengler Cup and the championship title. It would be a mess again in Gottéron. But that would also mean that Leuenberger would have written the most beautiful history of our hockey. A fabulous novel written in four months, which even the greatest authors could not have imagined, and which the Friborg club had been seeking to publish for years.