GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Geneva-Servette HC came back to life Tuesday evening to defeat Davos 4-0, after a disappointing start to the season.
The crowd of 6,501 at Les Vernets saw the hometown team take over, 0-0; 2-0; 2-0.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Geneva-Servette Hockey Club (GSHC) had a crowd of more than 7,000 to watch its electrifying match against Gotteron 28 October.
Tuesday 1 November it will need all the fans it has and a strong dose of good luck as it faces off against Davos, ranked second in the LNA with 41 points, against GSHC’s weak 11th place with just 16 points.
The Grenats have had a disappointing season to date, with injuries, the loss of a couple key players and the missing spark that has carried them to the Swiss playoffs in the recent past. Tuesday evening the team announced that American-Swiss player Eric Walsky will be off for four to six weeks with a knee injury, but at least he won’t require surgery.
TSR wrote enthusiastically about last weekend’s match, where Geneva defeated Fribourg-Gottéron 4-3 at home, but the Tribune de Geneve, which follows the team closely, says flatly that GSHC doesn’t have the talent it needs to claw its way back up the LNA, and in its current state of emergency, a win tonight is crucial.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Yaroslavl Lokomotiv ice hockey team was killed when 44 people lost their lives in a plane crash in Yaroslavl, less than 300km northeast of Moscow. One person is reported to have survived the crash but details are sketchy and unofficial numbers for those on the plane vary. The plane appears to have crashed shortly after takeoff.
The team was traveling to Belarus capital Minsk for the first game of the Kontinental Hockey League’s new season. The railway company team came second in the relatively new league last year and has been considered one of Russia’s leading times, a serious contender for the title this season, according to state news agency Ria Novosti.
Foreigners on the team included players from Germany, Sweden and Slovakia.
Links to other sites: Aljazeera, Ria Novosti
Basel’s stinky flower, Geneva’s sexiest fingers study, Cern’s rumoured Higgs particles, US women skate to gold in Zurich
Cern's Alice experiment, particle collisions
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A giant stinky flower in Basel, ring fingers that mean true love, thrilling women’s ice hockey world finals – the international population in the Lake Geneva region disappears during the spring holidays, heading off on travels near and far, but the news doesn’t stop.
Here’s a brief roundup of what you might have missed:
Phew! but beautiful to behold, Basel’s corpse flower
Switzerland was on the world news map, with hundreds of articles about the amophophallus titanium, aka the “corpse flower” that pulled in an estimated 25,000 visitors to Basel. Key facts: it is one of the world’s largest flowers (technically: “largest unbranched inflorescence in the world” according to wikipedia), it smells of rotting flesh, and it grows in the wild only in Sumatra, Indonesia. The first cultivated flowering was at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London in 1889 and since then there have been few sightings of the rarely-blooming flower. Basel’s Botanical Gardens‘ two-metre high plant bloomed this weekend, for the first time in its 17 years, and the first such plant to flower in Switzerland in 75 years.
Check out his length, dear
A man’s ring finger length gives clues to his masculinity, researcher Camille Ferdenzi at the University of Geneva in Switzerland shows in her research on 2D:4D, the name for the ratio comparing second and fourth digits. Her work was published 19 April in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biology Letters. For an easier explanation, LiveScience unravels the mysteries of sex and the ring finger.
God or no god particles, Cern is intense
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva-Servette Hockey Club is out of the Swiss hockey playoffs after losing a tense fight Thursday night 10 March in Geneva, to EV Zug in 12 minutes of overtime: 4-5 (0-3; 2-1; 2-0; 0-1). GSHC’s quarter-finals loss leaves Zug moving on to the semi-finals.
Links to other sites: TSR (Fr)
Swiss ice hockey
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva-Servette beat Rapperswill 4-2 to register their fourth successive win and move up to fifth in the table, their best spot in the rankings this season. However, their Canadian coach Chris McSorley risks suspension after a verbal attack on a referee.
Ice hockey in Geneva, not always smooth sailing
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva-Servette Hockey Club (GSHC) has snapped back at unnamed critics who, say the club owners, have been making damaging and incorrect innuendos that the GSHC is not transparent about its finances and that recent changes have caused problems with the team.
The city and canton have been slow to move on projects agreed to in 2010 to renovate the existing Vernets ice rink, before building a new arena for 2015, says the club.
20 minutes 17 February quoted Socialist Rémy Pagani, head of Geneva’s buildings and construction department, as saying that “At the moment the club’s project, which is supported by the city for a cost of CHF14 million, is stuck in the finance commission because the club has not yet presented its accounts.”
Simon Brandt, a centre-right Geneva politician, a week earlier accused Pagani of making empty promises to the club, saying it had nothing to worry about because Geneva would support it, even though the project doesn’t appear in the budget.
A meeting 8 March between the club, the city and the canton must see these projects move ahead, GSHC says, in order for its finances to become healthier: the club needs more VIP seats to be able to pull in additional revenues from these.
Chris McSorley and Hugh Quennec, the two Geneva-Servette owners, sent out to journalists a lengthy press release 17 February stating their position: the club’s accounts have been completely open to Geneva auditors, they insist, the Foundation’s finances are managed separately from the club’s and no players have been paid out of the foundation’s money, responding to accusations that have been made, mainly in Geneva’s political arena.
The complete release, in French, is below.
It shines a light on the murky side of Geneva politics as much as on the club’s business. McSorley told GenevaLunch in October that while relations with the city and canton are good, the process of getting and keeping essential financial support is not always easy. This becomes clear in Thursday’s statement, where McSorley and Quennec note that:
- work agreed foreseen in June 2010 agreements with Geneva have not been carried out. As a result, the club’s CHF3 million deficit has not diminished, despite strong demand for VIP seats.
- Work planned for 2011, including work not done in 2010: GSHC has received no confirmation about when work will begin.
- The new arena for 2015: the club is still waiting, despite the June 2010 agreement that the Vernet site will be used, for the credits to be approved and deposited to carry out the studies necessary to move the project ahead.
GSHC press release, 17 February 2011
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva-Servette showed Tuesday evening that it has the capacity to bounce back from a rough start to the season, marred by injuries. It defeated HC Ambri-Piotta 3-0 (2-0, 0-0, 1-0) before a crowd of 6,818 at Les Vernets in Geneva.
Coach and co-owner of the Geneva Servette Hockey Club, Chris McSorley
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Christophe Stucki joined the Geneva-Servette Hockey Club Monday 14 February as the company’s new general director, with responsibility for the staff, monitoring revenue and developing game operations, according to Chris McSorley, one of the club’s two owners.
The move by club President Hugh Quennec comes shortly after the team hit a rough spot in the 2010-2011 season, with several crippling injuries and the loss of top player Thomas Déruns in order to keep the club’s finances healthy.
The team has slipped slightly in Swiss A league club rankings to 6 out of 12 teams, but it has made it to the playoffs for the eighth time in nine years. McSorley says that while he expected this, he is proud of the club’s efforts despite what he calls “an abnormal amount of injuries”.
The team has won 17 of 46 matches this season.
Stucki’s addition will not deplete the hockey team budget, which is separate from that for administration. It’s the latest in a step-by-step effort to professionalize the entire operation, says McSorley, moving beyond previous director Philippe Kneubuehler, who left in 2009 after four years and Louis Christoffel, former director.
“Our ambition is to be one of the biggest, best-run sports franchises in Europe,” McSorley says, noted “for the quality of the administration and the players on the ice.”
Stucki’s background is in finance, most recently in the jewelry industry, and includes a stint as a senior auditor for PriceWaterhouseCooper. He was head of finance and administration for Cartier Joaillerie, a branch of the Geneva Richemont group, until 2008, and he has worked as an independent consultant since then.
“We’re not only the owners, but it’s an owner-managed company,” says McSorley of his role and that of Quennec, his partner. “Hugh is involved as a poliltician, in the renovation project at Les Vernets, the new arena project and monitoring the programme of the foundation. I still have my hockey club responsibilities. I’m both manager and coach, two fulltime jobs in one.”
Russia’s junior hockey team arrived home in Moscow 8 January, a day late, after being denied permission to fly out of Buffalo, New York’s airport in the US, for “unruly behaviour”. The Russian team came from behind in the finals of the World Junior Hockey Championship to trounce Canada 5-3.
Celebrations began soon after and continued at the airport bar. Delta Airlines denied the 32 members of the team access to the airplane, citing unruly behaviour. Some members of the team were reportedly so drunk they had to be carried off their bus.
Canadian media lamented the Canada team’s loss, “one of the biggest disappointments in Canadian hockey history” according to a commentator, and focused on the unruliness of their victorious guests.
The Buffalo airport is near the Canadian border with the US.
Links to other sites: Globe & Mail, Moscow Times
Improved seats should help boost finances and set up in time for 23 December match
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva-Servette Hockey Club (GSHC) has a new VIP area, one of its requests to the city and canton in order to boost revenues and provide some fans with a better seating option. The 180 new seats are in place in time for tonight’s match against HC Davos, ranked number two. They provide a complete view of the playing area and of the large screen as well as of the rest of the club, and the VIP seats are closer to the ice.
This is the final game before the mid-season break for the holidays. GSHC in January will be on the ice again, but will also start to work with Geneva authorities on details for the improvements to the Vernet arena, for September 2011, and the completely new rink that is scheduled for September 2015.
Background, GenevaLunch interview with coach Chris McSorley and 2010 profile of the GSHC team
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva-Servette Hockey Club (GSHC) was given a Halloween bruising 31 October in its home rink, Les Vernets, losing to HC Fribourg-Gottéron 0-2 (0-0, 0-1 0-1). A packed house of more than 7,000 fans watched the match. GSHC’s record for the season is now 6 wins, 10 losses and the team has slipped to seventh place in the rankings.
In other hockey-related news, La Liberté in Fribourg carries a front-page story about zero tolerance at the ice rinks in Switzerland: an off-duty police officer has been sanctioned for spitting on GSHC players and team officials last March when Fribourg and GSHC played a match at the St Leonard arena. He’s now on the “Hoogan” list of hooligans, and he’s been banned from ice hockey matches for a year. His employer, the Fribourg Cantonal Police, has sanctioned him.
Dan Fritsche - Image via Wikipedia, user Resolute
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Geneva-Servette hockey team announced it has hired Dan Fritsche, 25, an Ohio-born, former New York Ranger striker, to play with the Eagles through 2013.
In a written statement, Chris McSorley General Manager of the club, said he’s happy Fritsche, now a naturalized Swiss citizen, picked Geneva to begin his European career.
“We believe that our style well matches his playing style. His energy, and passion will soon make him one of the public’s favorites.”
Fritsche first began to play hockey in the Ticino where his uncle, John, played for HC Lugano and HC Ambri-Piotta; the uncle also played for the US national team during the 1990 World Hockey Championship. Dan Fritsche’s brother, Tom, currently plays with the Colorado Avalanche in the US.
International sports, ice hockey
The Swiss and Germans fight it out on the rink (video)
Not much cheering left - Photo Matthew Manor HHOF-IIHF Images
Mannheim and Cologne, Germany (GenevaLunch) – Canada and Switzerland were eliminated in separate games last night from the 2010 IIHF World Championship.
Canada, the current Olympic champion, was eliminated 2-5 by Russia who played to win from the beginning of the match.
The Maple Leaves team was not able to overcome the Russian team which seeks its third straight championship. Russia will now play host Germany in the semi-finals this weekend.
Switzerland, which had been playing well and was one of the favourites to advance to semi-finals, lost 0-1 to the German squad that was relentless in its attack, fueled by a full stadium: 12,500. Philip Gogulla scored the sole goal that crushed the Swiss hopes to play in the finals. The Swiss-German rivalry goes back 100 years and is the oldest on ice, according to the International Ice Hockey Federation. (See the winning goal).
GE Servette organizes celebration to thank fans after its dreams of national title fade
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The LHC (Lausanne Hockey Club) will have a fresh look Tuesday, with a totally new board lineup after Canadian owner Barry Alter fired the entire board and the club’s general manager, Gérard Scheidegger. The new board has not yet been named, but the club is scheduled to celebrate the end of its season Tuesday evening 27 April at the Malley sports centre.
GE Servette is inviting fans to join them Wednesday 28 April at 18:30 at the Vernets sports hall to celebrate the end of the season. Entry is free.
Links to other sites: 24 Heures (Fre), 20 Minutes (Fre)
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swiss tennis star Roger Federer showed up at Thursday night’s hockey match, 15 April, between Bern and Geneva, adding a bright note to what was otherwise a gloomy night for the Geneva Servette Hockey Club. He visited the locker rooms after the match, an unexpected treat for Geneva coach Chris McSorley, who is a longtime Federer fan, reports the Tribune de Geneve.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva Servette played the hometown crowd hand and defeated Bern Tuesday evening 13 April, 5-4 (2-0, 1-2, 2-2) in the second match of the Swiss ice hockey championship best-of-seven series. The Vernet ice rink held a capacity crowd of 7,202.
Background, GSHC, GenevaLunch
Zug, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - GE Servette lost 2-1 to Zug after prolongations in their fourth game of the semi-finals of the ice hockey playoffs. The Zug team dominated the match before conceding a late equalizer that sent the game into extra time. They are now 2-2 in the seven-game series.
Favourites Bern strolled through their series, beating Kloten 4-0 after taking the fourth game 2-3. Bern can now relax while they wait to see whether they will meet Zug or GE Servette in the finals.
Links to other sites: TSR, Tribune de Geneve
Vancouver, BC, Canada (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland held its own against Canada in ice hockey 18 February in the Winter Games, giving Canada a 3-2 victory, but in a penalty shootout. The Canadians were widely expected to win easily: they have a strong young team, are skating on home territory and they were still bruised from their 2006 Winter Games loss to underdog Switzerland in Torino.
Background, Washington Post
Saskatoon, Canada (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland was a pale shadow of itself Tuesday in Canada, losing to Sweden, 11-4 in the M20 World Junior Championship match for the bronze title. The US took the championship title in a surprise overtime win, defeating Canada 6-5.
Links to other sites: 20 Minutes (Fre), NHL videos
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva Servette won at Vernets before a crowd of 6,031, defeating Kloten Flyers Tuesday 17 November 3-2 (1-1, 1-0, 0-1).
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva Servette is out of the doldrums after its win over Zug at the Vernets rink: GSHC – EV Zug 4-1 (2-1, 2-0, 0-0), in front of a hometown crowd of 6,216.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva Servette Hockey Club defeated HC Ambrì-Piotta 5-2 (2-0; 2-1; 1-1) Friday 16 October at the Vernets ice rink, to a good early season crowd of 6,185.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Zurich Lions coach Sean Simpson, 49-year-old Canadian, will head the Swiss hockey team. Simpson replaces Ralph Krueger. He has signed a four-year contract that begins with the 2010/2012 season. Simpson led the Zurich team to the Champions League title in January 2009. The Zurich Lions went on to win the Victoria Cup in September, defeating the NHL team, Chicago Blackhawks.
Links to other sites: Swiss Hockey Federation, TSR (Fre), Zurich Lions (Ger)
Bern, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – Russia defeated Canada 2-1 in the finals of the ice hockey World Championship for a second year in a row, to hold onto the title it won in Quebec in 2008.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland beat the US hockey team 4 to 3 in overtime in the final qualification-round game at the International Ice Hockey Federation Championship. However, in spite of the team’s efforts Switzerland was eliminated as it needed a regulation win to advance to the quarterfinals.
Julien Sprunger recuperating from a neck injury – Photo ©Manuel Zingg/IIHF
Twenty-three year old, Swiss forward Julien Sprunger was taken to a hospital after David Backes from the US team, sent him to the boards during the first period. Backes was ejected from the game.
The matchups and times for the quarterfinals have been set for tomorrow 6 May, and Thursday, 7 May.
Title: Ice hockey world championship
Location: Bern and Zurich
Link out: Click here
Description: For Switzerland, the 73rd IIHF World Championship in Bern and Zurich-Kloten will be the biggest sports event of the year 2009.
Over 300,000 spectators are expected to attend – and millions are expected to follow the championship on TV.
Start Date: 24 Apr 2009
End Date: 10 May 2009
Title: End of season game: Geneva-Servette
Location: Geneva
Link out: Click here
Description: The end of season for the local Geneve hockey team is here. The Patinoire des Vernets will be center stage for the awards ceremony before the game.
Date: 13 Mar 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (TSR, video, Fre) – GE Servette lost its fourth match with Kloten 5-6 ((1-1, 1-2, 3-2) with Byron Ritchie sidelined after the last match for pushing the referee.
Schluefeg, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – GE Servette was hoping to show its best against Kloten but in a third straight loss it looked to be far from its best. Kloten – GS 4-1 (1-1, 2-0, 1-0).
Details, Tribune de Geneve, Fre
