After 17 rounds, the Lakers are sitting in second place in the table. Although they are seven points behind the leaders from Davos, they have the same lead over Lausanne in third place. Few experts would have predicted Johan Lundskog’s team to be so high in the rankings before the season. Rappi was often ranked between 10th and 13th in the predictions. These assessments were probably due to the Lakers’ rankings in previous years, when they finished 12th and 10th.

But St. Gallen is currently surprising the Swiss ice hockey world. This is also due to the strong goalkeeper duo of Ivars Punnenovs and Melvin Nyffeler. The two have shared playing time almost equally so far – only Lausanne and Ambrì distribute games similarly evenly between their goalies. 

The Lakers’ offense is also working well: with 58 goals, they are only behind Davos and Lausanne, and in 5-on-5 situations, only HCD (2.71 goals per game) is more accurate than Rappi (2.47). But the SCRJ is also successful on the power play, scoring 13 goals with an extra man on the ice and succeeding in three out of four power plays.

The EVZ also scored a barrage of goals on Thursday evening, led by Mike Künzle. The power forward scored the second hat trick of his career against Ajoie. With a total of eight goals, Zug has now climbed from 10th to 5th place in the list of the highest-scoring teams.

Last season, at least seven goals were scored in each of the four games between the two teams, with the wins split 50:50. This season, EVZ suffered a 0:6 defeat at home against Rappi. Spectators at the St. Galler Kantonalbank Arena can therefore look forward to plenty of goals on Friday – the only question is, which side will score them…