DenverPost über Aebischer

[Mr._Hockey]

Avs' solid risk-taker
By Terry Frei
Denver Post Sports Writer

Many of David Aebischer's Swiss countrymen, stubbornly neutral in many matters, decisively told him he was nuts. By Swiss standards, the young Aebischer was making great money to play for Gotteron-Fribourg, his hometown team in the Swiss Elite Leage. But the goaltender walked away from it to take a shot at reaching the NHL.

In 1997, Swiss didn't do that. They didn't fill in all holes in Swiss cheese, ban tourists from Lake Geneva or calibrate Swiss timepieces to run three minutes fast per hour. And they didn't dare come to North America to play hockey.

Soon, Aebischer was in Upper Marlboro, Md., playing for an East Coast Hockey League expansion franchise, the Chesapeake Icebreakers.

And for this, Aebischer had left home? Briefly, he considered returning to Switzerland.

"I told myself, 'I can't go back, because then the people who said I can't do it will be right,"' Aebischer, 26, said after an Avalanche practice last week.


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Nearly seven years after beginning his North American career, Aebischer this season has been everything the Avalanche could have hoped as the retired Patrick Roy's successor. Two days before Tuesday's NHL trading deadline, any talk about the Avalanche making a deal for a big-name goaltender, or about Aebischer as a potential playoff Achilles' heel, involves his lack of a postseason track record, not doubts raised by his regular-season performance.

After Friday's 5-1 victory over the San Jose Sharks, he has a 2.07 goals-against average, .926 save percentage and 27-15-9 record.

The lanky goalie has come a long way, and that isn't measured only in miles.

Born in Geneva, Aebischer moved to Fribourg with his parents when he was an infant. The Sarine River runs through Fribourg, and almost invariably, French-speaking citizens live on one side, the Swiss-German speakers on the other.

Living on the German side of town, Josef Aebischer worked for a company involved in manufacturing artificial hips, and Dorthee was a housewife.

Their son, David, took up hockey at age 4 because his uncle was a backup goalie for Fribourg. But he didn't get started in the sport in earnest until after he recovered from horrific injuries he suffered when struck by a car. When he was 5, he was with his parents at a family gathering at his grandfather's restaurant.

"After a while, I got bored," Aebischer said. "I went outside, saw a bike and tried to cross the street. I wanted to see it. It was like 7 o'clock at night, and it was dark. I don't remember much after that.

"The next thing I remember was the lights of the ambulance when they were taking me to the hospital."

Aebischer suffered a concussion, a broken jaw "in two or three places," and a broken arm. He was in the hospital for about a month, and for a while after that, struggled in school because he had trouble maintaining his concentration.

After his arduous rehabilitation and recovery, he took up skiing and judo, but soon concentrated on hockey.

"I was always playing one or two age groups ahead of where I should have been," Aebischer said. "For a long time, I felt like all I did was hockey and school."

When he was 12, the local pee wee team traveled to Quebec City for a world-renowned tournament. Aebischer and his teammates went to a Quebec Nordiques game, where he got to watch Ron Tugnutt in the net and young Joe Sakic wearing the captain's "C."

"From that day on, the NHL was the dream for me," Aebischer said. "But most of the time, you're thinking, 'No way."'

Coming to America

At that point, there had never been a Swiss player in the NHL.

"Nobody ever had done it before, so it's tough to have a dream like that," Aebischer said. "Realistically, my thing was to play in the Swiss elite team and the Swiss national team."

At 15, he began practicing with the Fribourg team. The best players were two former Soviet Red Army stars, Andrei Khoumutov and Viacheslav Bykov, both in their late 30s.

"I saw good shooters very early," Aebischer said. He played his first game for the Elite League team at the precocious age of 16.

He was crushed when he first was eligible for the NHL draft in 1996 but wasn't taken. Two assumptions about Swiss players worked against him: One, that they weren't good enough; and, two, that even if they were, they would prefer the secure, high-paying and shorter-season existence in the Swiss league.

In June 1997, Dorthee Aebischer called her son to the phone, and a reporter introduced himself and started asking David questions about the NHL. Aebischer asked back: "Why do you ask me those questions?"

The Avalanche had just drafted him, the reporter said. Suspicious, Aebischer thought he was the victim of an elaborate practical joke. Finally, he was convinced: The Avalanche had claimed him with the 161st overall choice.

"People asked me, 'Why would you leave this much money and this good life to go over there pretty much from scratch?"' Aebischer said. "But I wanted to do something a little bit different from anybody else."

Aebischer signed and came to North America. He started the season in Hershey (Pa.), but quickly was dispatched to Chesapeake, then moved to the ECHL's franchise in Wheeling, W.Va.

"It was a shock because when you come over at 19, you think you can play in the NHL already," Aebischer said. "I didn't have much English in school, so I had pretty much no knowledge of it when I came over here. I watched the TV. If I wanted to know a word, I looked it up in the dictionary, and I was always talking and trying to talk and reaching for a better word. You have to learn pretty fast, because nobody is going to learn French or German."

During the Christmas holidays, he helped the Swiss to a third- place finish in the World Junior Championships in Finland. In the spring, he played well for the Swiss national team in the World Championships in Zurich.

"It was in his home country, and there was all that pressure, all that excitement," said Avalanche vice president of player personnel Michel Goulet. "Switzerland didn't have many expectations, but he helped take his team to the middle rounds, and I thought it was an amazing performance."

On Sept. 2, 1998, Aebischer took a Swissair flight from Geneva to New York, then traveled to Hershey for the Bears' training camp. He turned on the TV in his hotel room. Swissair flight 111 had crashed, killing all 229 aboard. It was the same plane Aebischer had been on. They were the passengers at the gate, waiting, when he disembarked. "You are sad that all those people had to die because of the tragedy," he said. "It could have been a couple of hours earlier and it could have been you."

At Hershey, he was Marc Denis' backup, then the No. 1 goalie in 1999-2000. On the ice, he was surprisingly combative - almost Roy-like. Famed butterfly-style goaltending tutor Francois Allaire, who had helped a young Roy, also worked with Aebischer, so the similarities between Roy and the Avalanche farmhand were striking. Roy was listed as an inch taller at 6-feet-2, but physically, especially with their masks on, they seemed mirror images.

"You could see the progress from year to year, as he got more mature," Goulet said.

Aebischer's Swiss girlfriend, Alexandra, joined him in Hershey for the second season, and they have lived together since.

"The guys who played with him at Hershey aren't really surprised what he has done here, because we saw what he could do in a starting role," Avs winger Dan Hinote said. "When he has the pressure on his back every night, he's always done great things, and we saw that at Hershey. He's always been a very competitive guy. When guys come in his crease, he doesn't like that. He takes a few shots at them."

After the Avalanche traded Denis to Columbus before the 2000 expansion draft, Aebischer moved up, and he and two other rookies - Chicago's Reto Von Arx and Edmonton's Michel Riesen - became the first Swiss NHL players in 2000-01.

Aebischer spent three seasons as Roy's backup, posting decent numbers, mostly against second-tier teams. Because there always was tension between the imperial Roy and the impatient Denis, Aebischer was wary. Roy tended to bristle when anyone was labeled his heir apparent, because that implied he would be slipping or leaving soon. And he had no intention to do either.

"It was weird because you hear a lot of things about Patrick, and what I heard before, and that stuff scares you," Aebischer said. "But I had no problems with Patrick. None. He was just great. Of course, I would have loved to play more than I did, but other than that, I learned a lot from him. He gave me a lot of little pointers. Because we play so similar styles, that really helped."

Roy and Aebischer weren't warm friends, but they liked each other, and that's one reason Roy endorsed Aebischer as his successor when he retired.

"I had no doubt in my mind that he would play well," Roy said recently. "He was a good student all of the years I was there. I think he has the mental toughness and the skills to become one of the good goaltenders in this league. And I'm comfortable seeing them start the playoffs with him."

But at the start of the season, with Roy gone, the issue was: Can Aebischer get the job done? As the Avs scouted the rest of the league for potential trades, they took close looks at Washington veteran Olaf Kolzig as one of the potential fallbacks for Aebischer.

If it was Aebischer's job to lose, he didn't do it. He was solid, if not spectacular, and seemed to take the next step when he "stole" two points in back-to-back 1-1 ties at Vancouver and Calgary in mid-December. Former Avalanche player Mike Keane, a current Canuck who still has friends in the Colorado dressing room, pointedly said the only folks trying to find a replacement for Aebischer were in the media, because the Colorado players were happy with him.

"Obviously, you're not going to fill shoes Patty Roy left," Hinote said. "Nobody can do that. But I knew he was going to be really good. It was funny when people said, 'Ohhhhh, the biggest hole is going to be starting goalie,' but a lot of us knew that he could answer the challenge."

Colorado defenseman Adam Foote said he knew Aebischer "had the personality to step in and take control. But I was even surprised how fast he stepped in and adjusted to the No. 1 position."

Defenseman Rob Blake said the goalie "has given us an opportunity to win every game, and that's all you can ask for. I think more than anything, it's his mentality. He came in from Day One, took charge, and said away we go."

Avs coach Tony Granato said the "biggest thing is his poise and confidence. The whole team sees it. When you're playing in front of a guy who shows that - 'I want to make the big save, I want to be there for you guys' - that makes everyone better around him."

Two days before the trading deadline, it isn't out of the question the Avs could trade for someone who could supplant him as the No. 1 goalie, such as Kolzig. But it seems unlikely. The bigger possibility seems to be that Colorado could bring in a second-tier veteran goalie whose contract is up to be a short-term backup for down the stretch and the playoffs.

"The closer we get, the more it's in your mind," Aebischer said of the trading deadline. "I have said a lot of times that I can't control that. I think about it, but you can't let it worry you too much. If it happens, it happens."

If the Avs don't bring in Kolzig, or another longtime No. 1 goalie, the quiet Swiss next will get his chance to prove himself in the postseason, where the game is different and the stakes higher.

So far, though, he has answered the challenges.