Portrait
Hockey is more than a sport to me. The great emotions and challenges, the connection to the fans, the power and energy fascinate me. As Head Coach of the national team as well as a former professional player, hockey is of course also my personal history, my career and above all it is my playground – and I love to play. Even as a child I didn't want to do anything else and as an adult it shapes my outlook on life: It's all a game.
Playing – and living – is more fun if you are aware of your strengths, have curiousity and dare to do a lot.
You can learn this attitude, I know that from my own experience. My path has never been a constant line but has always brought some surprising twists, some of which I learned to appreciate over time. I certainly owe the courage to think big to my mother's formative optimism. Growing up in Zug, I started playing hockey at the age of three. Due to a career change of my father, I completed high school in Canada at the age of 15, where I learned to take on responsibility at an early age. I started off my career in my favourite sports and was discovered for the NHL at the Olympic Games. Although my respect for the NHL was big, I found the courage to say yes. Just as later in my career I found the courage to admit to myself that only playing hockey was no longer fulfilling me.
When I can show someone how to score a goal, it makes me happier than when I score one myself.
Instead of standing on the ice, I traveled around the world and lived with Shipibo Indians in the Amazon region of Peru. I learned a lot about myself and others and gained insights that enriched me tremendously and that I want to share. It is very important to me to make people aware of their appreciation for themselves and others and to give them back their self-responsibility through empowerment. Because responsibility means having the freedom to shape one's life according to one's own wishes.
What you think, you can create. What you want to be, you can become.
As a hockey coach as well as a life coach I work with blockages of all kinds and look for the element that prevents the individual or a group from fully exploiting their potential. Everyone is part of a whole and can play a crucial role in it, so we are all equal in value and can create great things together, if we dare. My greatest concern is to pass on these incentives to the joy of playing and living, in my private as well as in my public work as a coach, so that the inner fire of each individual burns full of trust, satisfaction and love.