When the puck drops on the 2024-25 season of the Champions Hockey League, it also marks the tenth anniversary season for the league that showcases the best European club team hockey. The league has come a long way since the opening faceoff took place in Czechia, in a game between Vítkovice Ridera and ERC Ingolstadt, in 2014.
Today, the CHL is an established part of the European hockey calendar.
As the CHL enters its second decade, it kicks into a higher gear amid several changes, most of them behind the scenes. In March, it was announced that Martin Baumann, the only CEO the league has ever known would leave the CHL. Communication and Digital Media Director Monika Reinhard was named the new Chief Operating Office. And the board will only have five members going forward, instead of nine, to make the CHL a more agile organization.
A new member on the board is Veli-Pekka Marin, the CEO and co-founder of Uplause, a sports technology company and vice chairman of TPS Turku. He will join CHL President Jörgen Lindgren, Henrik Bach Nielsen, Patrick Lengwiler, and Miha Butara on the board.
The anniversary season is played in the same format as last season, when the number of participating teams was dropped to 24. As in 2023-24, all teams drew two opponents from the three other pools in a system that creates a competitive and exciting league. The first round of playoffs will see the top-seeded team take on the 16th-place team and so on.
Rickard Wallin, the GM of Swedish Farjestad, summed up the charm of the CHL when he analyzed his team’s draw luck.
“The two Finnish teams will be tough, but we’ve also got a Norwegian team, a Hungarian team and an Austrian team, which are all teams we don’t know too much about,” he said.
