The 2017/18 Champions Hockey League season was one of the most important since the league’s inauguration in 2014 – not only did it do away with the automatic qualification system for the founding teams and introduced a revised and more competitive system that qualified teams on sporting merits alone, but the new season also introduced another big change to the playing format.
Whilst the 2016/17 season boasted 48 teams that were drawn into groups of three for the Group Stage, the 2017/18 season cut the total amount of participating teams down to just 32 and drew them into groups of four, rather than three. This change, the biggest the CHL has been subject to since its inauguration, reduced the total amount of games played by 32 and made every Group Stage match that more important.
Whilst the Group Stage was revised, the Playoffs format was kept intact. As before, the top two teams from each group advanced to the first Playoff round where the eight group winners challenged the second-place finishers in the Round of 16 consisting of a two-game, home-and-away, knock-out series, with the winner advancing based on goals aggregate.
Season stats
- 125 games were played, starting on 24 August, and ending with the Final in Växjö on 6 February
- a total of 735 goals were scored (an average of nearly six per match)
- the trophy left Sweden for the first time in three years, as JYP Jyväskylä shut out the Växjö Lakers in a 2-0 win in the Final
- for the first time in CHL history there was a final not involving the Frölunda Indians who were eliminated in the very first Playoff round (their worst-ever CHL campaign to this day)
- ZSC Lions’ Frederik Pettersson scored a league-high 16 points, crowning him the league’s most productive player of the year
- 13 different leagues were represented in 2017/18
Group Stage
- The Nottingham Panthers were by far the biggest surprise of the Group Stage, as they beat Swiss giants SC Bern, Finns TPS Turku and Czech-side Mountfield HK to the top spot of a highly competitive Group F to became the first-ever British team to qualify for the Playoffs
- German sides Red Bull Munich and Adler Mannheim both topped their groups showcasing the quality DEL teams’ posses
- Three out of four Czech teams secured a place in the Playoffs – the sole exception being Mountfield
- Frölunda topped their Group unbeaten
Round of 16
Arguably the biggest shock of the CHL in its four seasons came in the Round of 16. Trailing 3-2 from the first leg, Bílí Tygři Liberec won the return game in Gothenburg to take Frölunda to overtime, and then scored the winner shortly into the extra period to eliminate the defending champions.
All three Czech teams remaining in the competition advanced to the Quarter-Finals and were the most represented nation in the final eight. Eventual Finalists JYP just about held on against fellow Finnish team Tappara Tampere and secured their place in the QFs on goals aggregate despite losing on the night.
Quarter-Finals
The last two remaining Swiss teams – SC Bern and ZSC Lions, started their Quarter-Finals campaigns with wins, yet when the return games were over, both were packing their bags. On the contrary, Liberec celebrated a historic shootout win against the Lions and the Lakers edged past Bern. Oceláři Třinec breezed past Brynäs IF to book their place in the Semis alongside countrymen Liberec, whilst Kometa Brno failed to beat JYP at home and dropped out for good.
Semi-Finals
Two Czech teams, two Scandinavian teams. The Lakers faced Liberec at home after a 1:1 draw in Czechia and what a game that turned out to be! In arguably the game of the season, the Växjö Lakers were on a totally different level that night. With only the first 20 minutes of game time up behind them, Lakers were already 3-0 up and cruising sky high. They added four more in the remaining two periods and ended the night with an unbelievable 6-1 win and place in the Final.
Meanwhile in Finland, JYP edged four past Třinec in the second period of their home game, whilst Třinec only managed to score two and ended the first leg two goals down on aggregate. Despite them tying the series 6:6 with a hard-fought performance in front of their home crowd, the series was finally decided in JYP’s favour after a shootout.
The Final
Another all-Scandinavian final, be it without defending champions Frölunda for the very first time. Backed by some 200 traveling fans, JYP, the visitors, played a perfect road game taking the lead towards the end of the second period and then sealing the deal with an empty net goal shortly before the final buzzer. Not the result the majority of the sell-out crowd had hoped for, but a historic win to see the European Trophy leave Sweden and head to Finland.
It is also still the only time a team has been shutout in a CHL Final.