Swiss champs SC Bern are starting the new season at the burning pace they finished the last one, winning 6-3 in Kosice. Read more in Gamecentre.

It was a game were power plays dominated – both teams scored three times with the man advantage, but Bern also scored three times at even strength. The visitors from the Swiss capital jumped out to a 2-0 lead and kept the lead the rest of the night. In particular, Bern capitalized in the first minutes of periods – Simon Moser's 2-0 goal on a nice deflection in the first minute of the second period and Eric Blum's game-winner in the first minute of the third were crushing blows.

 “I think that we were better team 5-on-5 and we scored three power-play goals,” figured Bern forward Marc Arcobello, who closed out the scoring with a power-play goal of his own late in the game. “We skated better and protected puck very well – that was a difference between these two teams. We have to take fewer penalties in future games because three goals against us on the penalty kill is too much. A lot of games are decided on special teams.”

“Bern played well on the power play and scored three goals,” said Kosice goalie Miroslav Kopriva, who stopped 23 of 29 shots in the game. “We took a lot of stupid penalties while we were on offence. A positive thing in our game was that we scored three power-play goals too. Bern were strong on the puck and played very good in attacking zone. It’s too bad that we lost all three points.”

After his first competitive game behind the SC Bern bench, former Finnish national team coach Kari Jalonen said, “The team has been preparing very well and we have been doing scouting. The players were really playing like the coaches want to play. We were really good in 5-on-5 play, we were playing good defensively and we were strong on the power play. We scored three goals 5-on-5 and three goals on the power play. Those are the positives for this time of the season.”

Kosice head coach Rostislav Cada summed up: "SC Bern were better in the important hockey skills – positioning, skating, pace and in their physical game. We lost too many one-on-ones, both while attacking and defending, we made individual mistakes, we were very poor on penalty killing and conceded three goals. On the other hand, our power play was pretty good and we also scored three. We gave away cheap goals against experienced opponents. They were solid defensively and overal better tonight."