A lot of things are happening in Lausanne these days. We won’t dive into the consequences that the new ownership has had on and off the ice, a lot has been said already and we don’t have anything to add.
What we know for sure, is that a lot of people come and go.
Coach Craig McTavish has left and his former assistant John Fust will be taking over behind the bench.
Import players Brian Gibbons, Charles Hudon are gone. So is Denis Malgin and Robin Grossmann. But some nice resumes are arriving to Lausanne in exchange, enough to push our projection for the team pretty high in the league.
How that remodeled squad will play? We don’t know yet. But last season, Lausanne was pretty effective on both sides of the ice as you can see on their heatmap.
Transitions were fluid on exits and entries. Some quality plays were lacking in the offensive zone maybe, with a tendency to focus on the quantity of shots instead of the quality. Also, the very Canadian heavy forecheck was actually a weakness as the other teams were able to move the puck around the forecheckers pretty easily (as always on a big ice).
We will see how John Fust will tweak things up but the talent is there.
Roster for the 2021-22 Season
Remember: Explanation on our Win Shares and projection models is here
Player and goalie ID cards legend is here
The list of additions is very long, but alongside to the new cohort of import players also came established Swiss guys like Andrea Glauser, Jason Fuchs, Damien Riat or the prospect Benjamin Baumgartner (CH-licence).
Christoph Bertschy is projected with the best Win Shares at 2.3, good for the 93rd percentile in the league. His 39 points are not that impressive but his value is quite driven by his defensive Win Shares value. He is also among the best in the league in Transition according to our tracking.
Damien Riat is really a gift from the sky. The 24 years old is projected at 46 points and is continually improving his production since he turned pro. We tracked him last year and his shooting mentality was very effective, especially on the Power Play. He will probably replace Charles Hudon on that front.
Jiri Sekac is one of the new imports, coming from the KHL where he scored the equivalent of 55, 38 and 43 NL points. We have him projected at 45 points and he is a top offensive player that could very well exceed those projections.
Phil Varone had a nice KHL season after falling hard at the end of his AHL career. He is projected at 46 points.
With Emmerton, sometimes seen as 5th import on the hierarchy, LHC has a player who’s been trusted by all his coaches since his arrival. He brings a solid defensive value, but could bring a bit more offensively, especially on transition and play building.
Benjamin Baumgartner is a very nice long term addition. At just 21 years old, he is already at the 71st percentile in the league, and projected at 38 points. In our tracking, he showed up as a shooter first but wasn’t too bad on shot assists either.
Behind them come a nice trio of players with Ronalds Kenins, one of the best in Transition in the league but also one of the best defensive forward in the league, Josh Jooris, very active in the offensive zone and a good passer. But one new guy is Jason Fuchs, signed till 2025 and projected at 33 points and the 67th percentile. But Fuchs especially stood out in our tracking for his great Transition and Play Building skills. He is simply a luxury that far down in a line up.
With Cody Almond, Tim Bozon and Floran Douay, that group is good for the 3rd best in the league on paper. Good enough for a contender. There is also some upside in the some of the youngsters: Maillard ranks well on transition (shame he was injured last season) and Jäger has been touted for quite some time now. Overall, Lausanne has a deep lineup upfront and has many options.
At the blue line
Here comes the firepower. Lausanne has assembled, by far, the most impressive defensive squad in the league, with FIVE players above the 80th percentile. Having two of those is already a treat, so having five….
Martin Gernat was playing in the Czech Extraliga where he scored the equivalent of 38 and 46 NL points recently. He is projected at 39 points and the 93rd percentile.
Joël Genazzi had a good 2021 season, stopping a trend that was seriously going down. Projected at 26 points, he is an offensive weapon with his shoot but also ranks at the 96th percentile for Play Building, with good Transition skills. He’s also very reliable in his own zone.
Is Lukas Frick underrated? Might be. Lausanne gave him an extension and he ranks at the 87th percentile in our model. He is very good on Play building and shot assists. He might be playing a serious style, but we also saw that he was capable of scoring highlight reel goals on his own.
Andrea Glauser is another smart, young addition. He has been progressing every year and his Transition skills are elite. Used to play in a top role in Langnau, we’ll see how he fits in a deeper system.
Yes, Mark Barberio is only the 5th defenceman according to our model. Even though he exceeded our projection, Barberio played a lot of minutes for great results… but not elite. His defensive value is among the best and he was very active in every aspects of the offensive game, even though his style was too often NHL formatted (like dumping a lot of pucks). He’s good. It’s just a matter of expectations we suppose.
With Fabian Heldner and Aurélien Marti, Lausanne is really deep. And they signed Justin Krueger to another year just in case.
Goalies
Tobias Stefan has one more year on his contract. At 37 years old, he remains a very consistent goalie capable of performing as expected statistically. And behind him, Luca Boltshauser had a great year, providing a Quality Start (allowing less goals than expected) 70% of the time, the best ratio in the league. His Win Shares is crippled by his 2020 season but we will seriously paying attention to him this year.
Projection for the season
Our model projects all games in the season to get a projected standings. Note that points are given according to game probabilities, meaning if team A gets a low 33% chance of winning a game, they get still 1 expected point (33% of 3pts). That is why, right now, even Ajoie is projected at 63 pts. But what matters is the relative difference between teams as you will see then the standings is revealed.
With that squad, Lausanne has what it takes to be part of a Big Three with Zurich and Zug. Before looking at anything else.
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You can also find some more statistics on NL Ice Data here: nlicedata.com