The Champions Hockey League season starts today, August 20th, this is the second season of the reincarnated Champions League, the Federations Media partner Nemzeti Sport covered this topic.
In Hungary August 20th is a national holiday, in other countries it could be as well, these are hockey fans who are happy since hockey has finally started. The second season of the Champions Hockey League (CHL) is underway with four Hungarians participating with television broadcasts as well. If Fehérvár AV 19 would have reached the EBEL semi finals they would also have qualified to the group stage of this tournament.
In 2008 for their 100th anniversary the IIHF tried to start a champions league which was won by ZSC Lions from Switzerland, the second season was cancelled because of financial and organizational reasons. The higher ups in European hockey would not let the idea of a Pan-European champion die, despite hockey teams already having a full slate of games and in a number of case in leagues that were not restricted to only one country. Eventually in 2013 a company was formed that would become the CHL and therefor would be able to organize and financially operate to try to emulate their counterparts in soccer.
The founding clubs of the CHL will be playing in the competition under an A licence, all these clubs have to do to play each year in the CHL is to stay in their domestic first division, if they are relegated then their spot will be replaced by another club. The B licence is for teams playing in the founding nations, these are usually restricted to the playoff champions, and regular season champions. If an A licences team happens to win the league then the B licens spot is inherited by the next available team, because of this Fehérvár would have qualified since two out of the four semifinalists in the EBEL were A licensed teams. C license teams are clubs that have received a wildcard from the IIHF.
This is how the 48 team field is complied with the groups for the group stage being drawn at the world championships every year. This year there will be 16 groups of three teams each with the top 2 teams advancing to the round of 32, which is direct elimination with a home and home series and the winner being decided on total goals. Interestingly enough the top league in Europe, the Russian KHL does not participate because they feel that the CHL would weaken their brand.
Regardless of what people think it is great that in hockey a club European champion can be crowned. The four Hungarians in this competition are István Sofron from Krefeld of the DEL, Balázs Sebők from KalPa of the SM Liiga, Vilmos Galló of Linköping of the SHL and Máté Gáspár from Linz of the EBEL. Since usually the top teams almost always advance from the group stage there is a good chance the the younger players will play in the CHL early in the season.