At this spring’s International Ice Hockey Men’s World Championship, the gold medal USA squad lost one game in the preliminary round, falling to Switzerland in a 3-0 shutout. The Americans and Swiss met again in the gold medal game, with USA and Kraken teammates Matty Beniers, Mikey Eyssimont, and Joey Daccord winning gold. But there was no surprise for Axel Alavaara that Switzerland was playing in the gold medal game.
“The one league that is rising fast in Europe is Switzerland [called the National League],” said Alavarra, Kraken director of European amateur scouting. “They increased to six imports [non-Swiss natives] there and pay well. Switzerland is a competitive league right now. Their top teams are absolutely as good as the best Swedish teams and best Liiga [Finland’s top league] teams.”
This comparison will come into play for the Kraken hockey operations group in the upcoming 2025 NHL Draft set for June 27 and 28 in Los Angeles. While Swedish, Russian, and Finnish prospects have dominated the European draft boards of NHL teams in past years and decades, the geography is expanding. It’s one significant reason why Sweden-based scouts Alavaara and colleague Pelle Eklund criss-cross the continent to attend games in countries other than Sweden, Finland, and Russia (the latter two are covered by Kraken scouts based in those nations).
“The Swiss have won the Champions Hockey League over the last years,” said Alavaara. “The Swiss league sometimes is a little bit faster [translating to high-level skating], but Sweden is a little bit heavier league. The Swedish league is pretty defensively oriented, more hard work. The Finnish League is a little bit younger. They don't have the same money [as Switzerland’s National League] to get the top imports there. It's a little bit harder work, fewer skills in Finland.”
Championing the Swiss Rise
The Champions League was founded 10 years ago to establish a competition similar to one for European soccer leagues, with teams from different countries and leagues first qualifying to play a Champions schedule, then advancing in a tournament bracket until a winner is crowned. Swedish clubs captured six of the first eight Champions League titles while Finnish squads won the other two. But Swiss teams have been victorious in the last two seasons.
One reason why this year’s draft class will still feature first-round picks from Sweden (two players ranked top 10 in most insider mock drafts) and Finland, plus comparative numbers to North American prospects in the second and third rounds, is the sheer depth of good teams in the Swedish League and Liiga.
“Sweden, for example, has 14 teams that are pretty strong clubs with maybe eight teams that can win the league championship each year,” said Alavaara. “That league has deep competition. In Switzerland, you have four teams that contend for the championship year in and year out.”
But the Kraken widening the European scope to Switzerland, the Czech league, and other European nations is a trend that will continue. As for Swiss prospects, when Switzerland recently named its first six players for the upcoming 2026 Winter Olympics during February in Italy, Nico Hischier (26-year-old captain of the New Jersey Devils), Los Angeles forward Kevin Fiala, 28, and New Jersey defenseman Jonas Siegenthaler, 28, were the big names on the list currently enjoying the prime of their NHL careers.
Alavaara said Czechia’s top pro league is improving because players who might have earned more valuable contracts in Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) are staying home in recent seasons. Counterbalancing the upturn in the Czech league is a dip in the competitiveness of the KHL, but top prospects remain from that league.
“The skill level is getting up there in the Czech league,” said Alavaara. “But it’s still heavy and tough [for offensive forwards] to get net-front and stay there.”
The Kraken have certainly recognized the value of players from Czechia, selecting forward Eduard Sale in the 2023 first round and defenseman Jakub Fibigr in the seventh round last summer. Sale captained Team Czechia to a bronze medal at this past winter’s 2025 World Junior Championship, scoring back-to-back clutch goals to win the bronze-game marathon shootout. Fibigr, one of Czechia’s youngest players, earned top-four minutes all tournament and could easily have been named to the all-penalty kill first team if there was such an honor at World Juniors.
Eklund Evaluating Pro Effect on Molgaard and Nyman
The aforementioned Eklund played nine seasons for Philadelphia and starred for the Flyers in the 1987 Stanley Cup Final. In his Kraken role, he endorses the value of prospects getting European league experience, citing prospect 2023 second round Oscar Fisker Molgaard and 2022 second rounder Jani Nyman (28 goals with AHL Coachella Valley and three goals in 12 games with the Kraken) as prime examples. Molgaard, 20, who starred for a surprising and impressive Team Denmark fourth-place finish at Men’s Worlds, played his third full season with HK71 in the Swedish League this year, plus a stellar seven games (two goals, one assist) with Coachella Valley.
“It's easier to evaluate the player if he's playing in a pro league in Sweden, like with Molgaard,” said Eklund. “By the end of the season, he was doing really well there. Another example is Nyman last year [2023-24] in Finland. It can be easier if they are playing well on a pro level in European leagues. Of course, it's then easier to know the player is going to perform at a high level when he comes to Coachella Valley. It's way harder to bring over a guy from under-20 Sweden or Canadian Hockey League [WHL, OHL, QMJHL] as amateurs. You just have to put him in that environment and see how it goes.”
