IIHF announces Super Six

[Pekka Lampinen]

http://www.iihf.com/news/iihfpr5504.htm

Club teams will compete for the European championship title once again. The tournament resembles the European Cup last played in 1995-96. Since then the European Hockey League didn't work all too well and the best leagues couldn't be united behind the Continental Cup. Now every top league has agreed to join. This spring's champions of the six European countries ranked highest in the world ranking will participate, and Swiss teams (ranked seventh) have also agreed to take part in the following years if their national team can get them a spot. The next runners-up, with whom nothing has apparently been decided yet, are Latvia, Austria and Ukraine.

Unfortunately the success of the national team doesn't reflect the quality of the national league perfectly. I'm sure many would like to make a case for Swiss teams over Slovakian ones.

The strange thing is that they bound the tournament to St. Petersburg for the next three years. Maybe they needed long-term plans and sponsorship quite badly.

Click to read more...

 

[JVR]

Even though Germany is ranked higher right now there is no doubt that the Swiss league is much better so it's really stupid to not have a Swiss team there.

They should have made a top 8 tournament with the Swiss and Austrian league champions.

I really really doubt this tournament will be a success.

 

[wilka91*]

St. Petersburg? YEAH! Go SKA!!!

 

[Pekka Lampinen]

I just realized that if they decide to use the good old

1st, 4th, 5th, 8th
2nd, 3rd, 6th, 7th

system to create the two groups by world ranking, ignoring the last positions, it'll be HV-71, Kärpät and Avangard in the same group. All the best teams, I'd say.

 

[Douggy]

It'd be cool if the winner of this took on the AHL Champion!

 

[GB]

It'd be cool if the winner of this took on the AHL Champion!

That would be great. A 3-game series would do, I think.

 

[Pekka Lampinen]

That would be nice especially from a flex-the-muscle point of view. It won't happen, though. Like the press release says, the IIHF is wooing the Stanley Cup champions. That won't happen on a regular basis either, but it never hurts to ask each team every year. Settling with the Calder Cup champions would be somewhat of a blow to prestige as the AHL is still ridiculously underrated in the eyes of the masses.

Yet another realization: The lockout could shake the scales a lot, possibly even trigger an arms race right before the tournament.

 

[degroat*]

I love the idea, but I hate how they've set this thing up.

It would have been much better, IMO, to hold the tournament right after the playoffs for each league ends and determine the 'European Championship' right then and there instead of waiting 8 months.

 

[Riddarn]

I love the idea, but I hate how they've set this thing up.

It would have been much better, IMO, to hold the tournament right after the playoffs for each league ends and determine the 'European Championship' right then and there instead of waiting 8 months.

Agree. Only trouble is that then it will collide with the World Championships. A solution would be to scrap the world championships all together and play World Cup and Olympics every second year, and have the super 6 thing expanded to a true full blown europan championship for club teams.

I like the idea that the best team could face a good north american team but surely not the Calder winner. The european leagues (especially the Swedish, Finnish and Russian leagues) would never accept being on the level of the farm leagues.

 

[zecke26]

hmm...interesting thing, but they should be a swiss team. a top 10 instead of just 6 with two groups of 5 teams wouldn't hurt.

and frankfurt representing germany hurts. they won the german championship in a great way, but i doubt that they can return with that strength. so somehow i have the feeling that they will suck at this tournament.

 

[GB]

I'd like it if they set up a competition based on the old football European Cup. The league champion from every country is entered for the first season and plays a knock-out tournament over two legs, with the final being a one-off game at a neutral arena. The winner is entered into the next years competition regardless of domestic results.

 

[Pensfan86]

ya, that should be a good tournament, but why not add a few more teams? a 6 team tourney is somewhat lame. Id say, add on Great Brittans top team, Switzerland's, heck even like Italy's and France's. Thatd give you a 10 team tourny. Sure some of those teams would get a beating (french and italian teams) but who cares, it may add a level of excitement to the tourney.

 

[f1nn]

aren't french teams a higher level than GB teams?