On Wednesday, the EVZ announced the signing of Canadian Benoît Groulx as its new head coach. One day later, the 57-year-old landed in Switzerland and will take charge of his first game in the National League on Friday when the EVZ visits Kloten. “I received a warm welcome from everyone!” enthuses Groulx. However, the new head coach doesn’t have much time to settle into his new place of work, as it’s straight down to business: initial talks with the coaching staff, a speech to the team, an intensive training session and then numerous media appointments.

Groulx is motivated to take on the challenge of getting Zug back on the road to success after ten defeats in a row. “It will be a process, we’ll take it day by day,” he says. At the same time, he emphasises: “I didn’t come here to finish 7th, 8th or 9th after the regular season. We want to make it straight to the playoffs and from then on everything starts from scratch.”

The Canadian will initially coach the EVZ until the end of the season. He was head coach in the American Hockey League (AHL) for many years and also won the world championship title as head coach of the Canadian U20 national team in the 2014/15 season. Connor McDavid, Max Domi, Sam Reinhart and Shea Theodore, among others, were part of this team. Most recently, Groulx was head coach at Traktor Chelyabinsk in the KHL until November. Last season, he reached the play-off final with the team.

EVZ suffered one of its ten defeats in 2026 against Friday night’s opponent: on 3 January, Zug lost 2-1 to EHC Kloten after overtime in its first home game of the year. The Kolinstädter won the other encounters this season 5:2 in Kloten and 5:4 at home.

After the semi-final exit in the Champions Hockey League and the more than disappointing performances in the championship, a reaction is now required from EVZ under the new head coach. Kloten have also lost four of their last five games – but on Saturday, the airport town team secured an important 5:4 away win at Ambrì in the battle for the playout places.