SOLR, you are incorrect. The Swedes have always been credited to being where the trap was first used (Before Hockey even became very popular in Switzerland). The Swedes developed the system to be able to compete against Russian and the Czechs who were much better skaters and talented offensively. There are several links all over the internet that you can read up on this if you wish... and yet I can't find a single article that states it began in the Swiss Leagues.
Here is one link of several that I found...
http://www.leaguelineup.com/czechhockey/files/torpedo.htm
Many North American fans would agree. As the NHL has expanded, the talent pool, even with European imports, has failed to keep pace. Through the 1990s, an increasing number of teams adopted defensive styles, employing a variety of trap variations, such as the aforementioned left-wing lock or "neutral-zone trap."
The trap also first emerged in Sweden, in the 1970s, when the national team began playing a 1-3-1 system designed to clog up the neutral zone. It was created as a result of Swedish frustration over not being able to keep up offensively with the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakian national teams. In the NHL at the time, most forwards were playing a man-on-man style that saw wingers skate up and down the boards with their opposing wingers.
No one North American coach is credited with taking the trap concept as it was formulated in Sweden and grafting it on to his own NHL club. It took more than a decade for the trap to define itself in North America in the 1980s, and its genesis in the West was as much a result of osmosis from international competition as it was North American coaches coming to the conclusion that some form of institutionalized obstruction was needed to compete with more offensively talented teams.
OT
What I have heard is that NJD set up a strategy were they would build a strong defense. They played a defensive type of game. But not the 1-3-1.
Then NJD spent time scouting Tommy Albelin who played for Djurgården and saw how they used a extremely strict 1-3-1 system, the idea were gain the redline, dump the puck in and NOT even try to fo after it. Then line up three players at the redline, and one forechecker who had one purpose only, make sure that the other team couldn't transport the puck up at center ice, but had to do it along the boards. They wanted to win the puck at one side of the ice between their attacking blueline and the redline. The background of this system were a research made of all goals scored in the SEL over a very long period of time. It showed that most goals were scored something like 3.9 seconds after a turnover had been made in that are of the ice.
Anyway I've heard several reports on how Djurgårdens coach and Jaques Lemaire became great friends and visit each other in the summers ect. I've also heard how Tommy Albelin were asked to bring material of how Djurgården played with him to NJ ect.
There is also another thing I would like to point out, and that is that I don't belive in anyway or form that Swedes were pioneers or have better coaches then the ones in NA, but its a fact in terms of systems ect allot of it comes from europe, and still do.
The reason for it is simple. If you look back to 86' when Albelin played in the SEL, there were only
36 games or something played in a season almost as long as the NHL season. Less then half the games. The game were also played on a bigger ice surface with less aggresive players,
meaning that there were allot more time to think on the ice. Another factor were that
very few players also changed teams at that time. It weren't unusual at all that on one roster 15-16 players had played for one team only in the SEL.
This gave coches in Sweden a chance to play more advanced and strict systems then what is possible today in the NHL. Its not strange at all that that enviorment becomes kind of a labatory of new systems ect.