HELSINKI – Coach Sean Simpson is back for his third tour of duty, trying to put the Swiss in a favourable position for Olympic qualifying.

The top-nine teams in the World Ranking following the 2012 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship automatically qualify for Sochi. Switzerland finished ninth last year and is seventh in the pre-tournament ranking. A good tournament in Helsinki will mean going to Sochi with the big boys; with a poor showing the Swiss could risk battles in the qualification tournaments.

Goal

The Swiss have named Tobias Stephan, Reto Berra and Lukas Flüeler to the team, but the last two have only junior experience at the top international level. Berra and Stephan will likely get the start in the first few games.

Stephan is the more experienced netminder. He started in 2001 at the U18, helped the Swiss win silver and has an impressive 4-0-2 record in the last two World Championships and a GAA just above 2.00. Life would be so much easier for the team if he plays well.

With Berra the Swiss have the statistically best goaltender of the regular season on the team and with Flüeler the one who led the ZSC Lions to the Swiss championship with a great post-season performance recently.

Defence

A good blend of young and old, the defence is a strong feature of the team’s overall skill set. Once a fixture on the team, Mark Streit is back at World Championship play for the first time since 2009.

The captain of the New York Islanders will be appearing in his twelfth Worlds while the other NHL blueliner, 22-year-old Luca Sbisa, will be in his second. Goran Bezina will be in his eleventh tournament and hasn’t missed an event since 2002. Severin Blindenbacher is another veteran, but no one is more experienced than Mathias Seger, entering his 14th World Championship.

As the team’s back end goes, so goes its chances for success.

Forward

Goalscoring has been a consistent and long-term problem for the Swiss. In the last 15 years they have had only one World Championship in which they averaged even three goals a game (2001 – 18 goals in six games).

Some familiar names are back this year, and some newer blood can hopefully add a little firepower to the team’s offence. Fans know the names of Andres Ambühl, Ivo Rüthemann, and Thibaut Monnet well, but one of the stars of the forwards will be Nino Niederreiter, who has plenty of experience even though he is still only 19 years old. Two years ago he played his first NHL games and spent most of the year in junior, but this past season he played 55 games with the Islanders. He scored just once, though, and needs to do more with the national team. (See story on Niederreiter.)

Other experienced players include Matthias Bieber, Kevin Romy, and Julien Sprunger. Damien Brunner brings hope as the first Swiss-born scoring leader of the National League A in 30 years. (See story on Brunner.)

Somehow coach Simpson needs to coax more goals out of the team for it to succeed.

Prediction

Given the new tournament format, the lines are clearly drawn for Switzerland. In the eight-team pool in Helsinki, the top four teams advance to the quarter-finals, the bottom four receive a raking based on their record.

The Swiss need to finish in the top four, but they are on the bubble. One would think Finland and Canada will be in that group while France, Belarus, and Kazakhstan will be in the lower group. That leaves the Swiss to fight with Slovakia and the young United States team for the two remaining top spots.

ANDREW PODNIEKS