Longtime ZSC Lions and Swiss national team star Mathias Seger, a member of the Eisgenossen since 1996, confirmed his retirement at age 40 after winning his sixth and latest National title with the Lions.

Seger, who went undrafted by the NHL, first joined the National League A with Rapperswil-Jona in 1996, spending three seasons before joining the Lions in 1999, where he would spend the next 19 seasons in Zürich. Seger would rack up six championships and a Champions League title in 2009, also winning a Swiss Cup in 2016 and winning the Swiss Hockey Award in 2012. Seger was named captain of the Lions in 2006, but was stripped as captain for the 2017-18 season, his final. Seger ends his career with 937 regular season games, notching 103 goals and 403 points over that period, with another 72 points in 230 playoff games.

Seger joined the national junior team in 1995 before making his senior debut at the 1998 World Championships (ironically in Zürich), embedding himself as a national team mainstay, becoming team captain by the 2010 World Championships. Seger competed at a staggering sixteen World Championships (1998-2006 and 2008-2014) in seventeen seasons, as well as at both the 2002 and 2006 Winter Olympics, notching 69 points in 327 national team games, winning just a lone medal at his penultimate World Championships, Switzerland’s historic Silver medal in 2013.

Seger was part of nearly every Swiss IHLC reign since the turn of the new millennium, capturing his first IHLC at the 1999 World Championships and winning another eight over his career, dropping his ninth and final title in the aforementioned 2013 Gold Medal Game, his final game in an Eisgenossen uniform. We wish Mathias and his family the very best for his retirement and the things to come!

Photo Credit: Tagblatt – IIHF – HHOF – IOC