For those of you wondering "why do we have to wait 'til late September every year for the NHL to restart?", look no further, 'cause this year & for the foreseeable future, hockey's offseason will last from June to August instead of June to September! The reason for this shorter wait lies within the boundaries of over a dozen European nations, & within the confines of over a dozen top hockey leagues over there... The end result of bringing all those nations & leagues together is the subject of this post: the new Champions Hockey League!
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The teams have been separated into 3 different groups - with the "A" group consisting of the 26 teams that helped found the league:
- "'A' license: The 26 founding clubs all got an A license, since they play in the first-tier league of their respective system in the 2014–15 season."
The "B" group comprises the 6 national leagues that helped found the CHL - the Erste Bank Eishockey Liga in Austria, the Extraliga in the Czech Republic, the SM-Liiga in Finland, the Deutsche Eishockey Liga in Germany, the Swedish Hockey League, & National League A in Switzerland:
- "B license: Two teams – the regular-season winner and the play-off champion in the 2013–14 season – from each of the founding leagues (the Austrian EBEL, the Czech Extraliga, the FinnishLiiga, the German DEL, the Swedish SHL and the Swiss NLA) will also participate. If those already received an A license, other teams from the league can take the B license spots. The order the B licenses will be handed out is:
- National champion
- Regular season winner
- Runner-up, regular season
- Play-off finalist
- Best placed semifinal loser
- Worst placed semifinal loser"
The "C" group consists, much as most leagues that have "playoffs" do, of "wild card" spots for each of the non-founding leagues' champions - the Extraliga in Slovakia, the GET-ligaen in Norway, the Elite Ice Hockey League in the U.K. Ligue Magnus in France, & Metal Ligaen in Denmark, except in 1 case: the Belfast Giants, based in Northern Ireland, won the regular season title, only to lose the final (which, over there, is a single game, as opposed to a best-of format) to the Sheffield Steelers, but they were still invited to the CHL for winning the regular season; all that changed between March & May, however: they were unable to find any suitable arenas in which to fulfill all of the CHL's requirements, so... enter the Challenge Cup, a competition originally created to prolong the Ice Hockey Superleague regular season! Interestingly enough, the Nottingham Panthers, an English team, instead of Northern Irish, won the Challenge Cup this past season to extend its lead all-time to 2 over the aforementioned Sheffield Steelers, who have won that trophy 4 times so far, & guess who they defeated? The Belfast Giants once again... So, not only did the Giants get denied the British Championship (the playoffs) & Challenge Cup, but they also got denied their place in the inaugural Champions Hockey League season, all due to arena troubles!
The group format is somewhat more interesting, in my opinion, than most other group format-type competitions, as you can tell:
The groups themselves (lettered from A thru K) are as follows:
Obviously, the green line separates all the group winners from the rest of their respective groups, but you might be wondering what that blue line is for... Remember the graphic up top, with the 3 different colors? Well, that explains everything: "the 5 best runners-up among all groups..." They qualify, in a manner similar to the NHL's "new old" divisional format, which returned to that league with the '13-'14 realignment to bring about more divisional rivalries in the playoffs, just as in the regular season:
1981-82: "(The season) brought forth the return of divisional match ups with the top four teams from each division qualifying for the postseason play. Division champions would be determined, followed by the Conference champions, who would meet in the Stanley Cup Finals. The division semifinals was a best-of-five affair until the 1986–87 season, when it became a best-of-seven series, while all other series remained best-of seven."
The new (slightly different) format, used as of last season, had the playoffs looking like this:
Enough about the NHL's playoff formats for now, however; here are the current 2nd-place CHL teams!
Now that all of that stuff is out of the way, here's the schedule for each team's opening game, scheduled (as of right now) for Thu., 8/21 & Fri., 8/22 (all local times listed for each home team):
Having each game scheduled between 5 & 8 P.M. over there is actually beneficial to us viewing-wise, since, just as this winter's Olympics in Sochi, Russia, showed, having games start in "prime time" over there allows them to start anywhere between (in the case of this opening weekend) 11 A.M. (Vitkovice Ostrava vs. ERC Ingolstadt) & 2 P.M. (a few of the listed games) over here!
The ? then becomes "where to watch?":
"The Champions Hockey League will be seen on television in the United States, thanks to a new three-year agreement with ONE World Sports. The deal includes other media platforms as well, including internet and mobile coverage.
Press Release
ZUG – Infront Sports & Media, the exclusive commercial partner of the Champions Hockey League, has secured another major media rights agreement for the new pan-European club ice hockey competition with ONE World Sports. The agreement with the American network for global sports exclusively covers the U.S. market and runs from the launch of the competition in August, through to 2017. Included are the rights for multiple platforms including terrestrial, cable, broadband internet and mobile on a free and or pay basis.
ONE World Sports acquired rights for all 161 games of the Champions Hockey League, from group stage through to the final. The network’s TV and online audience will benefit from live broadcast and English commentary.
Joel Feld, ONE World Sports’ Executive Vice President, Programming and Production, commented: “We continue to deliver on our goal to bring our fans best-in-class programming from around the world. We expect that the newly founded Champions Hockey League will grow into one of the sport's premier championships.”
Bruno Marty, Infront’s Executive Director Winter Sports, said: “This is a major agreement for the Champions Hockey League as it demonstrates the favourable perception and appeal of the tournament beyond Europe. With broadcast coverage ensured in the USA, Pan-European club ice hockey positions itself strongly in one of the most powerful markets for the sport. With the best of the best clubs and players facing each other, the competition’s potential is fully acknowledged already before its first season gets off the ground – confirmed by yet another multi-year agreement.”
Also, while we all wait for the Champions Hockey League to start, remember: this was the last live NHL action we all saw last June:
I'm not just saying this because I just straight up despise most everything to do with the New York (st)Rangers, A.K.A. the "Rags" to those of us here in Jersey, but their ice saved them from getting completely swept by the L.A. Kings last June - Dare I say they should've never done this twice:
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| game 1 |
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| game 2 |
soon followed by this "end of an era":
side note here: From what I've heard about the whole Queen tour with former American Idol winner Adam Lambert, it looks as if those tunes are more alive than at any point since former Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury's 1991 death... Obviously, that's a tour, while this is simply a "posthumous" album:
I get it - that album was basically 2 decades' worth of M.J., all thrown together approximately 1/2 decade after his untimely O.D. death, but it did make this commercial a "thing" this summer:
(NOTE on that commercial: The only time I remember hearing anything from that album in Japan (unlike the boatload of times I heard the Frozen soundtrack over there) was early on, in Osaka, on this huge SONY "Jumbotron"-esque video board that, much to my surprise, played about 1/2 J-pop & 1/2 English-language top 40 stuff in this "top 5 list" that I remember seeing played up there... Other than that & once in this ramen place in Tokyo that couldn't seem to play anything but M.J., I don't remember hearing anything of his over there!)
In addition to the aforementioned commercial, I'd also like to present a few Frozen/Pokémon "mashups":
Obviously, since I'm a guy who just so happens to have a very teenage-girl-esque obsession with the movie & soundtrack in particular, I put the 2 Princes (well, 1 Prince, & 1 almost Prince who tries to launch a coup) up top, & then all the images of the Princess & Princess-turned-Snow Queen down below them...
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