With four games to go before the start of the playoffs, one of EBEL's top teams opted to make a coaching change. Tom Pokel, a league champion last year with HC Bolzano, was let go after a run of five straight defeats. Jim Boni, who was at the helm when Vienna won their only only championship so far in 2005, is back as head coach.

by Lukas Peroutka

ZNOJMO, Czech Rep. – It is not common for the Vienna Capitals to change coaches in the middle of the season. In fact, it hadn't happened since the autumn of 2003 when Kurt Harand was fired and Jim Boni was brought in as an emergency replacement. One and a half years later, Boni was behind the bench when the Caps won their first ever  – and so far their only – EBEL championship title. Now he returns to the club and his task is to rally the team for the upcoming playoffs, which start next Friday. 

“It is only about 10 days, which is naturally very little time to change the basics. But it is a new start,” says Boni.

Before the start of this season, Tom Pokel was hired to replace Tommy Samuelsson behind the bench of the team from the Austrian capital. Pokel was coming off a hugely successful season in Bolzano, winning the championship in the club’s rookie season in EBEL. He then coached Italy at the World Championship in Belarus before jumping straight into action in Viennas. And as he admitted a few days ago, he has felt tired and mentally exhausted. 

“His schedule was very challenging. Coaching in ice hockey is a very high-performance task and it cannot be done without a break,” Capitals GM Franz Kalla explained to Der Standard.

Vienna enjoyed a strong start to the season, winning 14 of their first 17 games and getting into the Champions Hockey League's round of 16. But since their CHL exit, times have changed and results have gotten worse – with injuries to some key players, the club lost 14 games at home. Their start was good enough to put them among the league's top six teams and earn a spot in the so-called Pick Round, but there the Caps have floundered. The team went into their game on Tuesday night, Boni’s first game in charge, at the bottom of the top group of six competing for playoff positioning.

After Boni’s first coaching stint in Vienna ended in 2007, he coached another Austrian club, Linz, for two more years before moving to ERC Ingolstadt in Germany's DEL as general manager and later sports manager, a position he held until 2014. He arrived to Vienna on Monday and jumped straight into action on Tuesday, on the road against the league's only Czech club, Orli Znojmo. 

The Capitals battled hard with a new man behind the bench, playing to a 1–1 tie after 65 minutes of hockey before ultimately falling in a shootout. Their only goal come in the third period courtesy of former NHLer Andreas Nodl. Jan Seda opened the scoring early in the first period for the home team and Ondrej Sedivy scored the shootout-winner before more than 3000 happy fans in Znojmo. The win gives the Czech club 10 points, good for third place in the Pick Round – four ahead of fourth-placed Abla Volan Szekesfehervar and five ahead of Vienna and Villach SV, who are now tied for fifth.

“I wanted to be behind the bench, for sure,” Boni said afterward. “The atmosphere there was very intense. Before the game, I watched about 10 hours of video material from different games to get myself better acquainted with the team and the league. But I was not coaching this game, my assistants were there to do that,” he added, giving credit to Phil Horsky and Christian Dolezal, who are much more familiar with the team. 

Despite the team losing its sixth straight game, it earned a crucial point on the road, and with three games to go could still realistically finish as high as fourth. Vienna fans hope that this signals a turning point in the team's confidence level and on-ice success.

“I feel we can be right in the battle for a top-four placement,” he said. “We just need more time. In a few days we will be much stronger.”