Lara Stalder Leaving Sweden To Return Home

Lara Stadler is one of the greatest players ever to skate in Sweden's SDHL, but she'll be heading home to Switzerland next season.

The SDHL’s back-to-back-to-back scoring champion, Lara Stalder, is leaving Sweden to return home to Switzerland. While she’s not stepping away from the game, Stalder is hoping to support the growth of women’s hockey in her home country.

“I’ve been abroad for 10 years now and I want to help grow the game at home,” said Stalder.

Stalder will join EV Zug in the Swiss women’s “B” league. She leaves Sweden without having won the SDHL title, this year her Brynas team having again fallen to Luleå in the final.

“I feel empty at the moment. I really tried to do my best for us to win, but I also know that my job is to score goals and I didn't make it,” she said in a translated article with Swiss media. "I have to leave without the gold, it will remain on my to do list.”

While going home is a step down in on-ice competition, Stalder is also moving into new roles to build the game in Switzerland, as well as working with a men’s hockey team to build the women’s game.

“I got the opportunity with a big organization in my home region, and a big club in men’s hockey,” Stalder said.

“They really want to stand behind women’s hockey as well and build all structures from youth all the way to the top and be kind of like a lighthouse, it’s a dream coming true that I can still play at home and also work for the club and grow the game that way.”

In six seasons in the SDHL, Stalder scored 402 points in only 191 games averaging 2.1 points per game. She leaves the SDHL third in all-time scoring, while playing more than a hundred games less than each of the players above her on the list. Prior to playing in the SDHL, Stadler was a Patty Kazmaier Award nominee playing for the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

Her legend as one of the all-time greatest players to come from Switzerland is already cemented, and through her move back to help grow the women’s game in Switzerland, she could now become one of the most revered builders in the sport as well.