In the playoff final between Davos and Fribourg-Gottéron, everything is once again wide open ahead of the third game. The pace is horrendous and the players want to force their opponents into making mistakes.
21.04.2026, 13:58
21.04.2026, 14:04
SDA
You could have been forgiven for thinking that the second game of the playoff final on Monday evening in Fribourg was incredibly boring. During a brief interruption, the cameras on the large video wall show a spectator reading a book. The title: "How serial killers think".
However, there is nothing boring about this final. Fribourg made a few too many small mistakes in their 3-1 defeat. For Davos' Tino Kessler, however, these are not simply mistakes. "You might perceive it that there are more mistakes," explains the scorer of the groundbreaking 0:1 after less than three minutes. "I have the feeling that these are not simple mistakes, but forced ones under pressure." In the "very tough and very fast games", this is a decisive recipe for success for the man from Graubünden.
Less emotion, Lemieux also remains calm
The Davos team achieved an important goal in the second game. "We wanted to concentrate on ourselves and focus on what's in our hands," says Kessler. "And start the game better." In fact, the game was much calmer than in the hectic opening game, which was characterized at times by overflowing emotions and controversial refereeing decisions. Brendan Lemieux, whom the Freiburg fans and players had singled out as the villain for his hard check on Christoph Bertschy in the closing seconds, is constantly booed and provoked, but remains calm. The refereeing duo of Mark Lemelin and Marc Wiegand are sometimes petty but consistent and hand out fifteen minor penalties.
This time, however, Davos got off to a lightning start. They led 2:0 after four minutes and 3:1 after the first period, after which the qualification winners had the game under control for long stretches. It was a mirror image of the first game, when Fribourg led 1:0 after nine minutes and 3:0 after the second period and managed to hold on for the win, albeit with considerably more drama.
Davos can respond to setback
"It's a tight series, of course," says HCD defenceman and World Championship silver medallist Sven Jung. "After all, it's first against second." His Fribourg national team colleague Christoph Bertschy agrees with him. "Nobody expected a 4:0." Perhaps the most important lesson for HC Davos from Monday's game: they proved to themselves and their opponents that they can also respond to a setback.
There have hardly been any of those so far this season for the record champions, who marched into their first playoff final since their 31st and last championship title in 2015 in impressive style. The second-best qualification since the introduction of the current mode with 117 points, winning the Spengler Cup and sweeping the champions of four of the last five seasons (Zug and ZSC Lions) off the ice in the quarter-finals with 4:1 victories each. Then came the first home defeat in this year's playoffs on Saturday, and only the fourth ever. So the real "serial offenders" are the Davos team - or at least they were until last Saturday.
Now they want to start a new series. If they remain unbeaten at home from now on, Davos will celebrate their 32nd championship title on April 30 at the latest. There is an important recipe for this: "Certainly come out better than in the first home game," emphasizes Jung. "We knew today (Monday) that we had to be ready from the start and not just play field hockey in the last twenty minutes."
Now an away series?
In this series between two evenly matched, well-coached teams, the first two games showed that it is extremely difficult to make up a deficit - especially by two or more goals. The team in the lead closes down the middle zone and hardly allows any quick counter-attacks. Fribourg also suffers from the fact that its overpayment game does not work at all and it is therefore unable to take advantage of the (too) many Davos penalties.
Bertschy nevertheless remains confident. He has another series in mind. "If the away wins continue, that will be good for us in the end," he says with a smile. The astonishing thing is that Davos and Fribourg only won at home in the qualifiers.
