A very special day for Swiss ice hockey and a very special day for this group of individuals that believed this was possible and never stopped believing. Beginning with The Wall in net, Martin Gerber , unbelievable penalty killing, and a lot of courage from players who just a few years ago were asking for autographs from the players they faced today. |
Both goalies were on the top of their game, but Gerber had the shutout against Canada fresh in his head. |
He brings a calmness on the puck to our power play. Off the ice, he brings passion and fire. |
I'm not really into addressing those kind of things. |
In general terms, I expect all teams to show respect in all situations as we do in ours. I'm sure it won't hurt in terms of having my players ready for [Wednesday]. |
It took a lot of courage to do this by some players who were asking for autographs from those players a few years ago. |
The team is mature. You're going to see that here, we've by far not reached our goals yet. We have Germany tomorrow. There's no time to sit on this. They can look back on this period for the rest of their life and they should do that with pride but they're not going to do that right now. I know that. |
There's no question the top seven are far above the rest. |
This is a great day for Swiss hockey and a great day for this group of players. It started with the wall in net (Martin Gerber), we had unbelievable penalty killing throughout, and a lot of courage from a group of players who were just shortly — a few years ago — asking for autographs from the players they just beat. |
This is a very special day for a group of players who never stopped believing. |
With all of Canada watching, this happening at 35 years of age, my God, that's a great story. |
Without continuity and without the core of players bringing a lot of experience to this tournament we would have had no chance. We have an average of 100 national team games among our 22 players. |