EHC Biel who?

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Jaykay
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Location: Biel, Bern

EHC Biel who?

Post by Jaykay »

Hi all,

A little read for everyone, if you don‘t care, just skip it, but I have to share it - it‘s about my hometown-team EHC Biel.

For those who don‘t know, we have a whole other system here. We have 2 professional leages NLA and NLB. NLB already is only semi-professionel I‘d say almost 50% of all players if not more have like a 50% job. You have to think that Switzerland has less inhabitants than most of the big Cities in the US (about 8 million).

Every season, there are 12 teams in each league. NLA has 8 playoff-spots and 4 relegation-spots. The relegation-teams play a play-out, and the „winner“ (so the team, which loses all) has to play league-relegation against the champion of NLB. The winner of the Series plays NLA next year, the loser NLB

3 seasons ago, my EHC Biel won the league-relegation against the NLB-Champ in 7 games. 2 seasons ago, my EHC Biel won the league-relegation against the same NLB-Champ as the previous year in 7 games. 2 mintes before overtime they score the gamewinner - imagine the crowd, they absolutely freaked out. Since Biel has the lowest budget of all NLA-Teams (like 2-3 mil / year), it was not surprising that we might play league-relegation, but no one wanted such thrillers. If a team relegates, it‘s turning semi-pro, and about 15 years, to get a real shot at NLA again.

Anyway, we then got Reto Berra, once drafted by the Blues. He came to us, because he was promised, that he plays every game he wants to play - if he sucks, well shit, but he know he played again the next game. He played absolutely spectacular the whole year last year, and it was a real miracle, we made the play-offs (which also made sure that we play NLA next year (so actually this season)). It‘s like a farm team plays NHL-Play-offs. Since the few good players we had were targets of richer teams of course, we already planned with play-out for this year again (remember 2-3 mil a year). Since Reto Berra only wanted to get „traded“ to an NHL-Team, and this did not happen, we had him again this year. Well, he played good again, but not spectatcular. It was a thrilling 50-game-season (we had no lock-out ;)) again, always somewhere between 7-10 seed. some 8 games before regular-season end we were 9th, 4 points behind. with 3 games left, we climed up to 8th - yesterday we won the 3rd straight (the first time in a bazillion year), and holy cow, I still can‘t believe it, we see play-off hockey :D

Congrats to me! yay!



P.S. feel free to move to off-topic, didn't know where to post :doh:
P.P.S. We have ugly jerseys, we all know :D



:letsgoblues:
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Jaykay
3rd Line Grinder
3rd Line Grinder
Posts: 110
Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2010 3:52 am
Location: Biel, Bern

Re: EHC Biel who?

Post by Jaykay »

Ok, I thought I'll update this, and probably just use it as like Euro Hockey News feed, I know that there is at least one Swede here, and I think at least a few of you guys will appreciate it. Plus, every word i type here is a little push for my english skills :D

So, we lost the first two games of the Series against no.1-seed, and we flat out sucked. ok, the games did go our way at all as well, but as mentioned in my initial post, we are glad to be in the top-league next year anyway. ...and who knows, maybe, but I don't want to jinx anything here ;)

Another thing, and I'd like at least some opinions here:

[youtube][/youtube]

This is a play-off game of NLB, so actually one of those two teams might get promoted, if they win their league and win the promotion-series agains the NLA-Loser. This happened yesterday evening, the guy already had successful back-surgery, and doctors say that chances are 50/50 that he ends up in the wheelchair.

The other guy got a game-misconduct, and will probably be suspended (to be defined).

Well I'm not sure. First off, you don't wish this kind of injury to any sportsman. To me it looks like he might fear the check on the boards, and therefore tries to reverse-hit, combined with the very unlucky distance to the boards led to this very sad situation.

So let's talk about the hit. I'm really unsure. on one side it's a hit from behind, which would make the game-misconduct and suspension ok. On the other side, I mean what shall the other guy do the moment, he's about to get reverse-hit? 99.9% of all pro-player would counter the reverse-hit. I'm no physicist, but I think physically it's the logical thing to happen. The player in the yellow jersey keeps his direction all the way, while the the injured player completely stops his body-mass, and accelerates the whole mass in the oposite direction. so the power (weight/speed) of the yellow player is much higher, so he basically runs over him - what finally would not have happened the the initial action would not have been the reverse-hit of the injured player.

In my eyes this is a very ugly accident with an even uglier injury, this was not an intend to injury.

thoughts?
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abc789987
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Re: EHC Biel who?

Post by abc789987 »

Jaykay wrote: In my eyes this is a very ugly accident with an even uglier injury, this was not an intend to injury.
This is how I see it.

But..IMHO players need to take more care of themselves on the ice and not put themselves in danger like this. Pulling up and putting himself in the position to fly head first into the boards from that distance is asking for trouble. You see all to often guys turn their back and face the boards to get a better position on the puck.
...

Jaykay
3rd Line Grinder
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Posts: 110
Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2010 3:52 am
Location: Biel, Bern

Re: EHC Biel who?

Post by Jaykay »

in the meantime it was confirmed that he won't every walk again :cry:
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