ZAUGG: Swiss "power training" for Canadians
Joe Thornton (right) is a better player than back in 2001, his last Worlds stint
This tournament will finally give you an answer to a question that's often been asked but rarely been answered.
Does an NHL star get softer or does he develop when practicing and playing the whole season under a European coach in a European league?
Here's my answer: Just watch out for Joe Thornton and Rick Nash. Both played and practiced in Davos, Switzerland under Arno del Curto, by far one of the craziest coaches outside of the NHL.
He is well-known for running the most intense practice sessions since the days of the old Soviet hockey system with Tikhonov and Company. He is focused on three things. First, there's skating Second, more skating. Third, keep skating! He could make Ken Baumgartner into a rocket.
He has coached HC Davos now for nine consecutive years, winning the Swiss championship twice and the Spengler Cup three times, the latter being the oldest club tournament in the world. He turned down offers to work in Finland. He is known as crazy and tough, but hard-working too. He'll play cards with his players but he can be impulsive too. Once he burned the equipment of a departing star in the dressing room.
Del Curto's style of freewheeling, speedy hockey would not work on the smaller rinks in North America, but it's perfect on international ice surfaces, especially in a "no-hit league" like the Swiss League.
This season, Joe Thornton scored 10 goals and 44 assists in 40 regular season games, and Nash had 26 goals and 20 assists in 44 games. In the playoffs, Thornton had 4 goals and 20 assists in 14 games, while Nash added 9 goals and 2 assists in 15 games.
I think that with Arno del Curto's "Swiss power training" they became better skaters and therefore better players in their season in Switzerland--their first season in which they had far more practice days than game days. Nash concurred in a interview with the local newspaper.
In the tournament opener versus Latvia, Nash netted three goals and added one assist, while Thornton scored one goal and one assist. They were the most productive forwards on Team Canada.
Well, I know we should not make too much of a team's or player's performance after Game One. The heroes of the first game are not always the heroes of the last game. But the pace at which Thornton and Nash played in their first game for Team Canada was perhaps the most interesting fact of Day One in this tournament.
I've always been a big fan of the 'secondary' international competitions and this year the World's will be even better and more important than normal.
