At the end of the year, Zug will face one of the weakest away teams in the National League. HC Fribourg-Gottéron won only 5 of 16 games away from home. Overall, things are not going according to plan either: the current 11th-place ranking is too low for last season’s qualifying runners-up. The HCFG lost 2-0 to EHC Kloten on Friday and 4-0 to the Rapperswil-Jona Lakers on Saturday. The effect of the signing of Canadian Linden Vey has fizzled out. The 33-year-old Canadian joined the Saanen team in mid-November as the seventh foreigner and soon started scoring regularly – including his only goal so far in the 4-1 win in the last meeting with EVZ at the end of November.

Since then, Zug has won three out of four meetings, most recently on Saturday against HC Ajoie with a 4-0 win. Sven Senteler, Dario Simion, Andreas Wingerli and Fredrik Olofsson scored the goals in a commanding victory against the team at the bottom of the table. For Sven Senteler it was the first goal after 13 matches without a personal success. EVZ goalie Tim Wolf celebrated his third shutout of the season. It was a worthy response to the inadequate performance the day before in Lugano (2:5 defeat). On Monday, the EVZ has the chance to close the gap to fifth-placed EHC Kloten with a home win against HC Fribourg-Gottéron. There are currently five points between the two teams, with Kloten having played two games more.