The young team is looking forward to the playoffs

The U17 Elite Juniors will face the qualifying winners ZSC Lions in the quarter-finals (best of 5).

The U17 Elite team has qualified for the playoffs with aplomb. In the playoff quarter-finals, the qualification winners ZSC Lions await on Wednesday, March 5 (5 p.m., Swiss Life Arena). The first home game will take place on Friday, March 7, starting at 6 p.m. at the OYM in Cham. As a result of the many nominations of U20-Elit players for the NL team, more players than ever before were promoted from the U17-Elit team to the highest age group in the course of the season. As a result, Head Coach Sven Lindemann’s team relied on several players from the U15 Elite team. As a result, Zug often had the youngest team in the league. From this point of view, the playoff qualification must be rated particularly highly – especially as it was determined even earlier than in the previous year. And this despite the fact that EVZ has a negative goal difference. Sven Lindemann sees two reasons for this: “There were a few defeats with a lot of goals conceded. We also scored very few goals – that shows the lack of experience of the young players.”

Sieh dir diesen Beitrag auf Instagram an

Ein Beitrag geteilt von EVZ (@official_evz)

TO EPISODE 11 OF THE DOCUMENTARY

Zug has lost all five previous duels with the ZSC Lions. They are coached by Andrea Cahenzli, who is in his second season in charge of the team. Last year, the former NLA and NLB player of HC Davos and ZSC led the Zurich team to the championship title. It was their third in the recent past, after 2021 and 2022.

Zug won its last title at this age level to date in 2019 under Head Coach Marcel Jenni, who now leads the Swiss U20 national team. Last season, EVZ secured the bronze medal thanks to a 1-0 win over EHC Biel-Bienne Spirit. Tom Braschler scored the only goal in overtime. He is the defenseman with the most scoring points on the team this season (13). Sam Neff is first in the internal scorer ranking with 7 goals and 11 assists.