“We really lived up to the playoff motto ‘right up to the last second’,” says EVZ captain Lara Stalder, looking back on the semi-final series against HC Davos Ladies. “We have to build on that in the final against SC Bern,” she adds. The first game in the final will take place on Saturday in the PostFinance Arena in Bern (kick-off at 1 p.m.). On Sunday, the two teams will meet in the BOSSARD Arena (from 2.30 pm). The Zug team has won all four regular-season meetings and one preparation game against the Bern team. For Lara Stalder, that doesn’t matter: “Everything is different in the playoffs, it starts from scratch. Matches like this against Bern will be a new experience for us.” For Zug’s Head Coach Daniela Diaz, too, only the present counts: “We can no longer be interested in what happened in the past. The most important thing is to stay in the moment and keep faith in our plan and our path.”
The Zug team will contest the playoff final against SC Bern on Saturday, March 22.
This path has led the women’s team to the playoff final just two years after it was founded. After winning the EWHL Euro Cup and the Swiss Cup, the third title of the season beckons. Three wins separate the Zug team. “The players are burning to achieve this goal,” says Daniela Diaz. That’s why she and the staff are not finding it difficult to keep up the intensity during the current match-free week.
The SC Bern women’s team has also only been around for two years. At that time, the Bomo Thun club merged with the organization from the federal city. For this reason, the Bernese women – unlike EVZ – were already able to compete in the PostFinance Women’s League in the 2023/24 season. They made it to the play-off final straight away. They lost it 3:2 to the ZSC Lions a year ago. This season, they reached the final again thanks to a 3:0 win in the series against the HCAP Girls.
Daniela Diaz says of the final task of the season: “What we’ve experienced so far is fantastic. The support is huge, as we saw in the last match against Davos, when there were over 4000 fans in the BOSSARD Arena. We want to give something back to the organization, the fans, sponsors and partners.” That something is the championship trophy. Lara Stalder, who leads the playoff scoring charts with 7 points, is confident: “We can do it if we continue to get the best out of ourselves, every day and right up to the last second.”
