The Eishalle Herti in Zug

The EV Zug, on the Swiss hockey landscape since 1967, made it´s NLA debut in it´s tenth year in existence and has been transformed into a corporation in 1998.

Between 1978 and 1986 the team hit the ice in the NLB, the only exception was one season in the NLA in 1982. Ever since climbing up in the NLA again in 1987 the team stayed in the highest divison of Swiss hockey and reached the finals two times before capturing the first title in 1998.

The "Hertihalle" originally had a capacity of 8.200 but ever since some parts of the arena (one straight and some seats behind the goals) were turned into seating-room areas the capacity has dropped to 6.600, 3.750 standing-room tickets are still available.

Attendance-figures were very strong until 1999/2000 when the team switched to new face-off times (7:30 pm). It remains questionable wether the fans will adapt to the new game-times, so far, after two seasons, they elected to stay away.

Tickets should be bought in advance for games against Zuerich, Ambri or Bern, the same can be said for all playoff-games. A link to all advanced ticket-sellers can be found at the end of the article.

The arena in Zug is one of the older facilities in Swiss hockey and definetly outdated by comparison with modern arenas. During the summer 2000 a new practice-arena was opened, a new main arena is scheduled to be build somewhere in the nearterm future, even though no ground has been broken so far.

After the somewhat controversial construction of additional seats on two of the former standing room straights three years ago the capacity of the arena was reduced from 7.600 to 6.780 (2.858 seats, 3.922 standing-room). The all-time-high attendance-wise was 9.000, when that many people flocked to the deciding games for the promotion to the NLA in 1975/1976. Today, such big crowds are unthinkable though.

After the team once again advanced to the NLA in 1987 the average attendance hovered around 6.000, but has been on the decline ever since the team's last championship in 1998.

It is easy to point out the reasons for this. First of all people got too used to having a very succesful hockey team, and in addition to that people are just fed up with the arena itself, which hasn´t seen renovations of any kind since a roof was added in the 70s. Measured by today`s standards the building is just a disaster, and fans can only envy those in Langnau or Ambri, who have old buildings as well, but at least old buildings with some kind of charme. Zug's arena could be an indoor-tennis-complex as well, it would be near impossible to distinguish. Fans of visiting teams arrived to late on several occasions as well as they just didn´t see that the building they kept on passing was the actual rink in Zug. But there seems to be hope for the future. Zug, one of the richest towns of the world, is planning to build a new arena for its team somewhere in the not-so-far-future. That said, it is important to add that 2 plans for new buildings have already existed and were never put into practice. But I remain hopeful nevertheless!

Another funny information to add about the arena is that the visiting team and the referees have to share the same toilets, which lead to many theories about conspiracies over the course of time....

Even though I would not recommend anyone to travel all the way to Zuerich for a good burger only I would like to advise you to visit the burger-restaurant "Sandy" near the arena, which is not part of any franchise-chain and serves really good burgers.

Coming from Basel drive into direction "Rheinfelden, Baden, Wettingen" and "Zuerich". When you have reached Zuerich go in direction to Chur until you hit the exit Zuerich-Brunau. From there on drive in direction to Adliswil, Sihlbrugg and Baar. After passing through Baar the next town should be Zug.