Ice Hockey

For those who don't know me, I like to make continuous umbrella topics on things like sports, rather than starting a new one for each season/series/news.
We'll see how that turns out on this forum.


To begin with, women's world championship starting in couple days.
Included teams are USA, Canada, Finland, Switzerland, Japan, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Denmark and... Sweden. The one time Sweden has a total disaster in hockey and drops out of championship tournament, Russia goes and gets themselves expelled and Sweden is back in for free.

One of my great pet peeves in sports is the tournament system use here. There are two levels: 5 better teams (USA, Canada, Finland, Switzerland, Japan) and 5 worse (Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden). The higher ranked teams play their own group after which they all go to quarterfinals seeded to 1-5; the lower teams play their group, from which three best go to QF with seeds 6-8 and the others finish 9th and 10th (the latter falling out from next year tournament).

So, before first puck hits ice, it's been decided half of the teams are at worst 8th out of 10 even if they lose all their games.
And the other five are in position that they have to win at least third best team to be able to finish 4th or better; at least they did a little fix by adding 5th place playoffs for the QF losers, before you had system where it was practically impossible for 6th/7th best teams to rise into top 5.

This is 21st tournament. In previous Canada and USA have always played in final except for Finland taking one silver. Most of time Finland has also taken bronze, only other countries with medals being Russia, Sweden and Switzerland (with 3, 2 and 1 bronzes, respectively).

With both seasons starting at beginning of next month, it's time for me to (again) explain what CHL and KHL are, to the Americans and other uncivilized people here


CHL = Champions Hockey League, KHL = Kontinental Hockey League

Simply put, CHL is ice hockey European club championship. Although called "League", it's more of a tournament stretched along several months, to fit with all the ongoing national leagues.
CHL has teams from about dozen countries, with emphasis on the 6 "founder" leagues: Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Czech, Germany and Austria. (Unlike the others, Austrian ICE League is international with some teams from neighboring countries.) Other "challenger" leagues to have teams in CHL are Norway, Slovakia, Denmark, France, UK and Poland. For starting season there's also Slovenian wild card entry and a Hungarian team representing the Austrian league; previously there have been Italian, Ukrainian and Belarus teams. But other countries/leagues could have teams in CHL also - more on that in a moment.

CHL started 2014, although there have been various more or less similar tournaments since 1965 (European/Europa Cup, European Hockey League, European Trophy). A major motive in creation of CHL was appearance of KHL before it, until then the leagues only competed of fan interest with NHL, but this second major league was feared to leave national leagues in the shadows.
A quick word on KHL itself: Kontinental Hockey League started 2008, a Russian effort to create a challenger to NHL that would keep players from moving to North America and raise Russian hockey back to the glory of Soviet times (and also do some good PR for the country). KHL tried to get European teams to join in, notable ones to play there being Helsinki Jokerit, Lev Prague and Slovan Bratislava. There's also been KHL teams from Latvia, Belarus, Croatia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and China. But after the Ukraine invasion, KHL has been cut down to Russian teams and one from their friends Belarus, Kazakhstan and China.
So CHL was created to give more attention to European clubs and encourage them to stay in national leagues instead of jumping over to KHL.

CHL originally had 48 teams but the number was cut to 32 (and there are plans to drop it to 24; I hope not, I've liked the 32 format). The "founder" leagues have 3-5 teams each, allocated based on success of their teams during previous seasons. "Challenger" leagues have only one team, the national champion (the playoff champion, except in UK where regular season winner is valued higher, following the example of football). For the leagues with multiple teams, there's always been a place to both playoff champion and regular season winner; previously other teams were playoff runner-up and semifinalists, but it was changed to best regular season teams (I personally disagree with that change).
The tournament format has been 4 team group stage followed by 32/16 team playoffs.

Aside the founder and challenger leagues having 31 teams in CHL, there's also one special case: one team spot is reserved to winner of Continental Cup. The Continental Cup is a sort lower tier for CHL, played by teams from CHL challenger leagues and about dozen leagues not in CHL.
The spot isn't quite certain, being a "wild card" entry granted by discretion of CHL and was (scandalously, if you ask me) denied to a Kazakhstan team with the excuse that their entry would've forced their group mates to travel much longer than other teams (and instead the entry was given to Continental Cup runner-up).
As I mentioned before, Austrian League has some teams from neighboring countries; of these Italian Bolzano has gotten to CHL several times, this year there's first Hungarian team in CHL.
The reigning CHL champion qualifies automatically for next year, but that doesn't give the national league additional spot, just dictates that the CHL winner will play next year no matter how bad they'll do in national league that year. (Though I'm not sure if that applies if the team would fall to lower division/tier, that'd be a strange situation).

Swedish teams have been dominant, winning 6 of 7 championships so far. In first years Finland did almost as well - taking that one championship - but it's been downhill for us since and Czech and Swiss teams least to say catching up with Finns. German and Austrian teams were for long the weakest of these, but one or two have seen moments of success, Red Bull Munich even getting to final (as only team outside Sweden, Finland and Czech).
The challenger league teams can't really compete, none had ever made it to top 8 until last year French champion Dragons de Rouen did.

Women's world championship quarterfinals will be:

USA-Hungary
Canada-Sweden
Finland-Czechia
Switzerland-Japan


This has been even more uneven tournament than usually and you can bet quite a lot that it'll be USA-Canada final and Finland takes another bronze.
The winner of Switzerland-Japan (the almost certain 4th) and winner of the QF losers playoff for 5th place will get big advantage to next year tournament, so aside final, these 4-8th place games are the most interesting bit.

Germany was 9th dropping Denmark out of next year tournament (replaced by France) with a literally last second goal.

A bit about what's going on in Finnish national league SM-Liiga (and its lower tier Mestis).

Helsinki Jokerit is six-time Finnish champion who as only Finnish team joined KHL playing there 2014-22.
After the Ukraine War they've been in limbo, without actual team or organization, trying to get back in Finnish championship league SM-Liiga. Now it has been informed there will be no new teams for season 2023-24 (which was their aim).

There's also another team trying to return, Kiekko-Espoo/Espoo Blues. After couple decades in SM-Liiga they went bankrupt 2016 and had to restart from lower tier, currently playing on second level Mestis.
Kiekko-Espoo intends to join SM-Liiga for season 2024-25, which is now also the goal of Jokerit.

SM-Liiga has since 2000 been a separate commercial league; until then it was under Finnish ice hockey association that runs all the lower tiers. So there are considerable differences (particularly financially) on how a team joins each league. From Mestis you can also be relegated to lower Suomi-sarja which is the last national league; all tiers below that (Division II/III/IV/V) are played in smaller area groups.

Until 2000 SM-Liiga had 12 teams. It has since started to expand and is now at 15, with the two above expected to join sooner or later. There's some concern whether it's financially realistic to run that many top tier teams.

As SM-Liiga expands, its been eating the top teams of Mestis. To keep itself relevant, Mestis has now decided to expand abroad: for the soon starting season a Latvian team Zemgale has been added. It's kind of silly situation, but if they'll later get another Latvian team or better yet Estonian and Lithuanian ones, this could get interesting.

I would've lost my bet, because Finland had total disaster of a tournament.


Women's world championship results:

*=promoted or relegated

Championship/Top Division:

1. Canada (12th title)
2. USA (tied worst ever)
3. Czechia (best ever)
4. Switzerland
5. Japan (best ever)
6. Finland (worst ever)
7. Sweden
8. Hungary (best ever)
9. Germany
10. Denmark*

Division I A

11. France*
12. Norway
13. Slovakia
14. Austria
15. Netherlands (best ever)

Division I B

16. China*
17. Poland (best ever)
18. Italy
19. Kazakhstan
20. South Korea
21. Slovenia

Division II A

22. Great Britain*
23. Latvia (worst ever)
24. Spain (best ever)
25. Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) (best ever)
26. Mexico (tied best ever)
(North Korea withdrawn)

Division II B

27. Iceland* (best ever)
28. Australia
29. Turkey (best ever)
30. South Africa
31. Croatia
(New Zealand withdrawn)

Division III A

32. Belgium*
33. Lithuania (best ever)
34. Bulgaria
(Romania withdrawn)
(Ukraine withdrawn)
(Hong Kong withdrawn)

Division III B

35. Estonia* (worst ever)
36. Serbia (first appearance)
37. Bosnia and Herzegovina (first appearance)
38. Israel (first appearance)
(Iran withdrawn)

Finnish Cup is an interesting tournament. It was originally played 1955-1958 and 1964-1971 and returned 2017.
The modern version consists of teams of Mestis and Suomi-sarja (see couple posts up) and some additional from Division II, total of around 50 teams - changes bit year by year as the tournament is still seeking form.

I really like cup tournaments in sports, where you have large amounts of competitors and even small low-level teams get a shot for major title.
OK, in this case we don't have the top tier league involved and for example right now the remaining teams (QF) of ongoing Cup are all Mestis teams. But nevertheless it's been fascinating to look the chart from bottom, teams you never hear about, and I really wish this kind of tournaments would get more attention. (I'm pretty sure 90% of people here don't know it exists and this is the most hockey crazy country in the world.)

CHL playoffs this year have 5 Swedish teams, 4 Swiss, 3 German, 2 Finnish, a Czech and an Austrian.
Pretty much what is to be expected. But now I fear there'll be second ever Swedish final or even for first time all semifinalists could be Swedish.

This weekend NHL comes closer to me than ever before. There have been games in Finland before, but only in Helsinki; Tampere is closer to me.
Guess I'll have to watch since it's on public broadcasting.

The remaining two Finnish teams Tappara and Jukurit made it to CHL quarterfinals with four Swedish and one Czech. Last one is decided tomorrow between German and Swiss teams.

This is sensational success for Jukurit, a team that only first entered Finnish national league 2016 and until last season hadn't ever been in top 10 in Finland - now they are in top 8 of Europe!

Tappara made it to Champions Hockey League semifinal, beating Swedish Rögle in revenge for last season final.
They'll next face Swiss EV Zug; no Swiss team has ever reached final.
The other semifinal is between two Swedish teams (both former CHL champions).

U20 world championship quarterfinals are:

Czechia-Switzerland
Finland-Sweden
USA-Germany
Canada-Slovakia

Austria and Latvia play for relegation to Division I, to be replaced by Norway next year.




94th Spengler Cup was won by Swiss team HC Ambri-Piotta, defeating Sparta Praha in shootout. This was first title for Ambri-Piotta, 30th different winner and 4th Swiss team to win. (The tournament is always hosted by Swiss HC Davos.)

U20 world championship results:

1. Canada (20th title)
2. Czechia
3. USA
4. Sweden
5. Finland
6. Slovakia
7. Switzerland
8. Germany
9. Latvia
10. Austria

I enjoy hockey as it is continuous action, unlike Association Football which is a lot of kicking a ball back and forth interrupted by the occasional player falling down and acting like they're being electrocuted.

I have somehow missed or forgotten CHL plan to change format for next season. And I'm not least bit happy about what they're doing.

1. number of teams cut from 32 to 24

I'm mostly for "more the merrier" with tournament like this, but that's just matter of taste. However I have bigger problems with how those 24 teams are chosen:

2a. each of the six major leagues has 3 teams (as opposed to 5+5+4+4+3+3 now)

Two best leagues lose 2 teams, two next best 1 team and the worst leagues keep their current ones. And, until now the places were allocated by previous success, Now the leagues have nothing to win or lose other than the championship.

2b. winning team gets automatically in next season (like before) as an additional place for their league (unlike before)

OK, fair enough. All the more reason to hope Tappara wins.

2c. 5 final teams get in by wild cards, from different leagues (other than the six major)

Now, here's my real issue. Now you had champions of seven countries and Continental Cup winner (which have included Norway, Denmark, Slovakia, UK, France, Poland, Belarus and Ukraine, the latter two obviously out right now). From now on you'll only have 5 teams from those. And those five teams are arbitrarily chosen by some damn committee. I don't know if they'll still have a place to Continental Cup winner, at least optionally, or will it just be 5 national champions chosen by CHL shareholders.
Any way, there'll be less countries in than before and the small leagues are all set to 1 team (previously having opening for second through Continental Cup, like Polish league this year).
I expect it'll be Norway, Denmark, Slovakia, UK and France, with eastern Europe being dropped out completely.

3. group phase is replaced by "regular season" where all teams play 6 matches

Teams will be set in 4 pots (by league ranking and place in their own league) and drawn against 2 teams from pots other than their own (1 home and 1 away).
All 24 teams are ranked by the 6 matches (3-2-1-0 points for win,OT win,OT loss,loss) and top 16 plays playoffs as before, set in bracket by ranking.

I suppose it's not a terrible system, just kind of unclear. Being compared for playing against different teams isn't really any more unfair than having groups that can be easier or harder by luck.
So in this part I'm most annoyed by terminology: 6 matches is not a "regular season"!

Last year runner-up, Finnish champion Tappara makes it to CHL final. They will face Swedish Luleå, the winner of first CHL championship 2015.

TAPPARA IS CHL CHAMPION !!!

Second CHL title for a Finnish team (on 8th season).

This also means Finnish Liiga gets 4 teams to next CHL season, while 5 other leagues get 3 (and 5 get 1). That'll also be first season when Swedish league doesn't have most teams.


Luleå - Tappara 2-3

After Tappara took early 2-0 lead it was pretty quiet for half an hour. These are two of the best defence teams in Europe.
In beginning of 3rd Tappara gets lucky: a defender breaks stick, place opens up and other defender accidentally bounces in what was a pass in front of goalie. 3-0, the game is over!
Or not. 8 minutes to go Luleå get power play goal and is back in the game. Tappara keeps taking penalties (in the end 10 more minutes than opponent), and 2 minutes before end it's only a goal away.
Two or three long shots miss empty net, bringing the game again and again back to Tappara's defence zone. But on the decisive minutes Heljanko holds up the team, as he has much of the tournament:

European international ice hockey club tournaments have been a very mixed bag before CHL (which is still shaping up itself). But with Tappara winning CHL, I wanted to look up what have Finnish teams ever won:

CHL (2014-): JYP Jyväskylä 2018, Tappara Tampere 2023

Continental Cup (1997-): Jokerit Helsinki 2003

Nordic Trophy (2006-09)/European Trophy (2010-13): Oulun Kärpät 2007, Tappara Tampere 2009 (Finnish tournament) / JYP Jyväskylä 2013

Spengler Cup (1923-): KalPa Kuopio 2018

Women's world championship starting today. (See last year tournament in early posts of this topic.)
Finland's going to have hard time recovering from last year disaster, we are in great disadvantage starting in the lower group.

It's now certain: Tampere Tappara will be the only team that has been in Champions Hockey League in every season to the upcoming 9th.
Both other ones that had held up to last season, Swedish Frölunda and Swiss Zug, have now failed to qualify to CHL 9th season.

We still didn't quite get the dream final for Finnish ice hockey championship.
The two Tampere teams Tappara and Ilves, biggest sports rivalry in Finland, have only faced in finals once 1958 (although finished first and second also 1960 when there was no playoff).

Now for second year in row Tappara goes to finals while Ilves falls in semifinal. There has been 7 times since 1960 that one of Tappara and Ilves was in final and the other got bronze.

Tappara will face rather interesting team: Lahti Pelicans. This is a team that has been reborn numerous times. Before taking the name Pelicans 1996, they were known as Reipas Lahti, Hockey-Reipas, Kiekkoreipas, Lahden Reipas and... here's the interesting part: Viipurin Reipas.
Viipuri aka Vyborg is the largest city Finland lost to Soviet Union in WWII. The team relocated to Lahti and eventually changed name from Viipurin Reipas to Lahden Reipas.
What's notable about Viipurin Reipas is that they were the first Finnish champion in 1928 - which was also their only title, despite continuing under one or other name all this time (although not always at championship level).

Only success of modern Pelicans was silver 2012.

Women's ice hockey world championship results:

1. United States
2. Canada
3. Czechia
4. Switzerland
5. Finland
6. Sweden
7. Japan
8. Germany
9. Hungary
10. France

Hungary and France are relegated to Division I A.
As this year I A tournament in China has been postponed, we don't know for a while who'll replace them next year. For the two places play Austria, China, Denmark, Norway, Slovakia and Netherlands.

Tappara wins Finnish championship 5-4 OT at Game 5

Streak of two national championships and the CHL title between, that might be something that'll never happen again!

CHL teams for season 2023-24 have now all been decided.

Champions Hockey League will look on its ninth season quite different than ever before. From 48 and 32 the number of teams has now come down to 24 (big mistake if you ask me). Instead of groups we have "regular season" which is actually just 6 games per team. At least the playoff keeps the old 16 team format.

Also the allocation of teams has changed considerably. All six major leagues have three teams - plus the reigning champion: Tappara! - and five minor leagues have one team.
What hasn't changed are the teams: we have only one CHL first-timer, HC Innsbruck from Austria.
As I've mentioned before, Tappara Tampere becomes the only team that has played in CHL on all seasons.
Tappara is also the only former champion who qualified to CHL this year. Unless they'll defend the title, there'll be anew champion.
Another Tappara fact: they are first team to qualify to CHL as CHL champion, national league champion and regular season winner (although Frölunda did 2019 qualify through all possible three routes, being double champion and regular season third).
I'm happy Italian team HC Bolzano made it again to CHL because the new system enables teams from only 11 countries - but thanks to Austrian league being slightly international, we've still got a 12th.

Florida, Carolina and Dallas have several Finnish players and it ominously looks Vegas is heading for the Cup


World championship is at QF (tomorrow).
US, Sweden and Switzerland have been most convincing, but almost any game can go either way, so I wouldn't count out anyone but Latvia and Germany.

It'll be USA-Czechia, Switzerland-Germany, Sweden-Latvia and Canada-Finland.


I need to emphasize how big thing this is here. World championship is basically the biggest annual sport event for Finland: it's above Stanley Cup and Finnish championship league finals (and CHL final if a Finnish team plays there, because CHL is still so new and unknown thing). And ice hockey is above all other sports here.
So unless it's Olympic year, ice hockey world championships are the peak of the year for us.
And this year it's home games (due Belarus getting cancelled).

Ice Hockey World Championship results:

*=promoted to higher division or relegated to lower

World Championship (aka Top Division)

1 Canada (28th title)
2 Germany (tied best ever, best since 1953 as West Germany)
3 Latvia (best ever)
4 United States
5 Switzerland
6 Sweden
7 Finland (worst since 2005, tied worst since 1955)
8 Czechia (worst ever)
9 Slovakia
10 Denmark
11 Kazakhstan (second best ever; 10th in 2021)
12 France
13 Norway (tied worst since 2007)
14 Austria
15 Hungary* (best since 1978)
16 Slovenia*

Division I A

1/17 Great Britain*
2/18 Poland* (best since 2003)
3/19 Italy
4/20 South Korea
5/21 Romania (tied best since 1996)
6/22 Lithuania*

Division I B

1/23 Japan*
2/24 Ukraine
3/25 China (best since 1995)
4/26 Estonia
5/27 Netherlands
6/28 Serbia*

Division II A

1/29 Spain*
2/30 Georgia (best ever)
3/31 Croatia
4/32 Australia
5/33 Israel
6/34 Iceland*

Division II B

1/35 United Arab Emirates* (best ever, will next year be better)
2/36 Belgium
3/37 Bulgaria
4/38 New Zealand
5/39 Turkey
6/40 Mexico*

Division III A

1/41 Chinese Taipei (Taiwan)* (will next year at least tie with best ever)
2/42 Turkmenistan
3/43 south Africa
4/44 Thailand
5/45 Luxembourg (tied worst ever)
(North Korea* - withdrawn) (will next year be worst ever)

Division III B

1/46 Kyrgystan* (will next year at least tie with best ever)
2/47 Bosnia and Herzegovina
3/48 Hong Kong (tied worst ever)
4/49 Singapore (worst ever)
5/50 Iran (worst ever)
6/51 Malaysia* (worst ever, will next year be worse)

Division IV

1/52 Philippines* (first appearance)
2/53 Mongolia (worst ever)
3/54 Kuwait (worst ever)
4/55 Indonesia (first appearance)