Eurolanche

Duchene signs with HC Ambri-Piotta

Matt Duchene announced he is going to play in Switzerland for the team of HC Ambri-Piotta via his Twitter account. Duchene spent last two month in Sweden playing for the member of the elite Swedish league, the Frolunda Indiands. He played in 19 games, scored four goals and added 10 assists. Generally, his Swedish experience has not been rated positively by the local media. They also were talking about the bad atmosphere in the locker room and Duchene´s critics of his own teammates.

Duchene will play for the HC Ambri-Piotta, which is now at the second-to-last place in the Swiss league, 11 of 12 teams. His contract with the Swiss team is valid only for December for 3 games, but could be extend to the end of the lockout. Duchene will be definitely the biggest hockey person on the roster, which includes also the Vancouver Canucks goalie Cory Schneider. 

Accroding to Wikipedia, Ambri and Piotta are two very small villages. The combined population is 500. In spite of this fact, the team has many fan clubs over the Europe. The stadium has 2000 seats and room for other 5000 fans. The team was founded in 1937 and has not been relegated to the lower tier leagues since 1985. HC Ambri-Piotta has never won the national championship and their nick is „blue and white“. The Suiss team is one of two teams which have not reach 30 points in the season yet. The biggest rival of the Ambrio-Piotta is HC Lugano.

Duchene will probably play in the next game which is set for 18th December at the ice of the last team of the league, SCL Tigers. HC Ambrio Piotta will play only three games in the rest of December.

Eurolanche will contact the Swiss team and Duchene´s agent on Monday to get more information.