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Champions Hockey League

vorky said:
Three quarterfinal games were played yesterday. Average attendance was 2 260 fans.

Skellefteå (SWE) - 2 108
Luleå (SWE) - 1 404
Rögle (SWE) - 3 268
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And the last QF game - average attendance is 2 448

Mountfield HK (CZ) - 3 012
 
Omark said:
Blows my mind how Swiss teams can't beat Finns and Swedes. They have so much better teams on paper every year.
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Actually no. Swiss teams have that one line of super expensive foreign players but the rest are pretty much Swiss. The difference between these Swiss players to Finns and Swedes are like a night and day. Same with the Germans.
 
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karhukissa said:
The difference between these Swiss players to Finns and Swedes are like a night and day.
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The difference between NL Swiss players and C-grade Finns that are left over to the Liiga teams isn't actually all that big, if there at all. I mean Zug roster should say it all: Genoni, Geisser, Hofmann, Martschini, Herzog. The whole argument boils down to how much some particular 4th liner in Liiga is better than that in NL. Which surely doesn't make a "night and day" difference in the end.

Swedes/SHL are a different beast though as their teams are more or less able to match the top NL lines as well. I mean there are 35 Finns in the SHL and most of those are ones Finnish teams couldn't afford.
 
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SoundAndFury said:
Swedes/SHL are a different beast though as their teams are more or less able to match the top NL lines as well. I mean there are 35 Finns in the SHL and most of those are ones Finnish teams couldn't afford.
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Tappara alone has arguably 3-5 finnish players better than those playing in Sweden, in Lehterä, Ojamäki, Kemiläinen, Seppälä and Heljanko.

Lehterä - name a better allaround/playmaking finnish center in the SHL (Suomela has a cannonball start to the season, however for the past few seasons he's been 0,5PPG forward in AHL/Liiga and benefits greatly from seemingly being part of the best line dynamic with Smejkal and Karlkvist [a recent Liiga flop btw]) and would need to show some more to be considered to be at Lehterä level.

Ojamäki - name a better finnish goal scorer from the SHL than the last seasons top goal scorer from the best league in Europe.

Kemiläinen - name a better offensive minded d-man

Seppälä - name a better defensive d-man

Heljanko - name a better goalie

Out of those names Lehterä, Ojamäki and Kemiläinen are clear cut above any finn in the SHL in my opinion. Seppälä and Heljanko can be debated. Allthough when you watch Seppälä for a prolonged time you just realize that he shuts everyone and anyone in Europe down, so a tough argument to be made for a better d-man.

Also interested in as to of why teams like HIFK, Tappara, Ilves and Kärpät "couldn't afford" those guys in the SHL (Suomela, Oksanen, Honka, Leino, Näkyvä to name the top-5 in scoring) if they can afford guys like Ohtamaa, Kemppainen, Anttila, Rundblad, Byström, Lehterä, Ojamäki, Kemiläinen, Seppälä, Nättinen, Melart, Pakarinen, Haapala, Langhammer, Jokipakka...?
 
Ciccarelli said:
Tappara alone has arguably 3-5 finnish players better than those playing in Sweden
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Yes, Tappara and Karpat are 2 teams that have rosters similar to other European top teams, we have talked about it before.

Also, the point wasn't that Finnish teams can't afford any players of such level but that they can't afford all. If they could, these guys wouldn't leave, it's just common sense. They aren't moving to Sweden for better weather. And that spillover, to both NL and SHL, is very significant.

Not even exactly sure what are you arguing here. Yes, there are many quality players still playing in the Liiga. Yet the league itself is as watered-down as NL (probably more) just for different reasons. It's led in scoring by the Swede who arrived there via Austria, for Pete's sake.

Having said that, I know I can't win this one no matter what I say or what is actually happening in the world, so this is my final reply.
 
SoundAndFury said:
The difference between NL Swiss players and C-grade Finns that are left over to the Liiga teams isn't actually all that big, if there at all. I mean Zug roster should say it all: Genoni, Geisser, Hofmann, Martschini, Herzog. The whole argument boils down to how much some particular 4th liner in Liiga is better than that in NL. Which surely doesn't make a "night and day" difference in the end.

Swedes/SHL are a different beast though as their teams are more or less able to match the top NL lines as well. I mean there are 35 Finns in the SHL and most of those are ones Finnish teams couldn't afford.
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Looks like you missed the point here. We can forget about A-grade players here, average Finnish hockey player, let's just call it a C-grade is head and shoulders above Swiss ones. And NLA teams (behind those A-class players) are full of Swiss B-class which is worse than Finnish C, that's the point.

There's a reason why a team full of C-class scrubs won the World Championships. They are "game ready" which means that you can insert them to any team basically and they'll do ok (aside of NHL and leading scorer roles) because they have been playing that extremely tactical hockey since they were kids. There are handful of Swiss players that could do the same. That's the major difference.

There could be like 5 national teams from Liiga which would do okay in the World Championships, from NLA Swiss players you'd probably get one.
 
Tappara-Zug is going to be a tough matchup, it can go either way. Coin flip I could say.... It would be great to see Tappara in a final again.
 
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karhukissa said:
Looks like you missed the point here. We can forget about A-grade players here, average Finnish hockey player, let's just call it a C-grade is head and shoulders above Swiss ones. And NLA teams (behind those A-class players) are full of Swiss B-class which is worse than Finnish C, that's the point.

There's a reason why a team full of C-class scrubs won the World Championships.
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And "the point" is wrong.

The reason why Finland won the WC (or Olympics, or whatever) was that there were next to no Liiga players on it. From the WC team, 5 guys play in the Liiga this year (3 of them over 35), 4 in the SHL and 8 in the NL.

Also Swiss, with an entirely local roster, didn't have a single regulation loss in EHT so far (including quite deserved win against Finland) while every other team is relying heavily on players playing abroad. So it's really hard to pinpoint any evidence of the "average Finnish hockey player, being head and shoulders above Swiss ones".

As I mentioned before: between NT-level guys who are clearly as good as the Liiga players and imports, the "bad" Swiss players play on the 4th line. So the supposed argument becomes "oh our 4th liners are so much better than theirs.

Look at the CHL group TPS got knocked out of, Ilves go knocked out of.. Where are those Finnish superior players when you need them?
 
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SoundAndFury said:
And "the point" is wrong.

The reason why Finland won the WC (or Olympics, or whatever) was that there were next to no Liiga players on it. From the WC team, 5 guys play in the Liiga this year (3 of them over 35), 4 in the SHL and 8 in the NL.

Also Swiss, with an entirely local roster, didn't have a single regulation loss in EHT so far (including quite deserved win against Finland) while every other team is relying heavily on players playing abroad. So it's really hard to pinpoint any evidence of the "average Finnish hockey player, being head and shoulders above Swiss ones".

As I mentioned before: between NT-level guys who are clearly as good as the Liiga players and imports, the "bad" Swiss players play on the 4th line. So the supposed argument becomes "oh our 4th liners are so much better than theirs.

Look at the CHL group TPS got knocked out of, Ilves go knocked out of.. Where are those Finnish superior players when you need them?
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I wasn't talking about this past WHC, i was talking about 2019. That team was built around Liiga players and dropped Sweden with roster full of NHL stars.

Jesus christ you can't read? You are bringing up EHT rosters of team Switzerland, of course they can get a one good team from all NLA teams. But if we are diving into your average Swiss players, read average not ETH players there you can see the difference. Behind that EHT roster is a huge gap. What on earth are you talking about 4th liners since there's only limited amount of export players allowed per team (6?). That means that there are Swiss players basically on every line.

CHL is pretty much a joke, of course there will be upsets since nobody actually wants to travel to Norway or UK to play some games. You mentioned Ilves but what about Jukurit then? Cherrypicking. There's been zero NLA teams even in the final of this tournament so keep using that as an example.

Also how many Swiss players have gone to NHL directly from NLA and aren't young NHL prospects? There are quite a few from Liiga during past few years.
 
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karhukissa said:
Jesus christ you can't read? You are bringing up EHT rosters of team Switzerland, of course they can get a one good team from all NLA teams. But if we are diving into your average Swiss players, read average not ETH players there you can see the difference. Behind that EHT roster is a huge gap. What on earth are you talking about 4th liners since there's only limited amount of export players allowed per team (6?). That means that there are Swiss players basically on every line.
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There are 131 imports currently in NL. 7 per team are allowed but there are also guys with Swiss licenses. That comes to 9,35 per team. Plus I think you will admit the Swiss pool of roughly NT players is ~50 guys, at least (NT players like Riat, Alatalo, Fora, Bartschi, Miranda are currently below 50th in NL scoring amongst Swiss players). So that's again around 4 guys. That's 13 per team, not to mention top teams obviously stack more. So what roles are "the baddies" getting?

This average player is nothing but an image living in your imagination.

And yes, we talked all about Jukurit. Point is that 100% of SHL teams qualified to the next round, 100% of NL teams and 50% of Liiga teams. Without any "cherrypicking" or excuses where does one want or does not want to travel.

Also not entirely sure why are you in this thread, if you disregard CHL data, EHT data. So what do you base these statements on?

And actually, a lot of Swiss guys went from NL straight to NHL. Suter, Malgin, Moser, Hofmann. Considering there are only 12 in the NHL overall, that's a pretty significant number. Could probably count Merzlikins as well.

By the way, of the 12 Liiga guys who won the WC in 2019, 2 - Kuusela and Ojamaki - stayed in Liiga for 19/20 season. Which, once again, illustrates the whole point perfectly.
 
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I miss Vorkys participation in CHL threads. It was fun talking about a totally unrelated league in the CHL thread. Especially since both KHL and CHL is complete crap and uninteresting. Fans don’t want this and it won’t be interesting as long as the other leagues suck balls.
 
karhukissa said:
I wasn't talking about this past WHC, i was talking about 2019. That team was built around Liiga players and dropped Sweden with roster full of NHL stars.

Jesus christ you can't read? You are bringing up EHT rosters of team Switzerland, of course they can get a one good team from all NLA teams. But if we are diving into your average Swiss players, read average not ETH players there you can see the difference. Behind that EHT roster is a huge gap. What on earth are you talking about 4th liners since there's only limited amount of export players allowed per team (6?). That means that there are Swiss players basically on every line.

CHL is pretty much a joke, of course there will be upsets since nobody actually wants to travel to Norway or UK to play some games. You mentioned Ilves but what about Jukurit then? Cherrypicking. There's been zero NLA teams even in the final of this tournament so keep using that as an example.

Also how many Swiss players have gone to NHL directly from NLA and aren't young NHL prospects? There are quite a few from Liiga during past few years.
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2019 Finland also dropped Russia and Canada rosters full of NHL stars...weird how that is never brought up.
 
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OskarOskarius said:
I miss Vorkys participation in CHL threads. It was fun talking about a totally unrelated league in the CHL thread. Especially since both KHL and CHL is complete crap and uninteresting. Fans don’t want this and it won’t be interesting as long as the other leagues suck balls.
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Not sure what's the argument here. That all leagues not named NHL should fold?
 
serious question: does any club or country take this competition for full?
always have the impression they don't play with full force to avoid heavy injury that might will ruin the home league games.
so i kinda agree with the micky mouse league comment from rah in that aspect and don't really get why some people pretend it's such a good way to compare leagues when they don't play full.
 
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peachy89 said:
serious question: does any club or country take this competition for full?
always have the impression they don't play with full force to avoid heavy injury that might will ruin the home league games.
so i kinda agree with the micky mouse league comment from rah in that aspect and don't really get why some people pretend it's such a good way to compare leagues when they don't play full.
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Empty stadiums, little inspiration. I think an international ice hockey tournament can only work if there are fewer teams on fewer days. An extended Spengler Cup (without Team Canada) or similar format with the champions from Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Germany, ICEHL, Czech Republic, Slovakia + winner of the continental competition). Then you have to choose the right time for the tournament.
 
Lambo said:
Empty stadiums, little inspiration. I think an international ice hockey tournament can only work if there are fewer teams on fewer days. An extended Spengler Cup (without Team Canada) or similar format with the champions from Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Germany, ICEHL, Czech Republic, Slovakia + winner of the continental competition). Then you have to choose the right time for the tournament.
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Rather just see a Spengler cup to be honest.
 
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