Of the 48 clubs that will compete in the 2015–16 edition of the Champions Hockey League, 33 are so far confirmed. The latest additions are Black Wings Linz of Austria and Red Bull Munich of Germany.
Press Release
Black Wings Linz from the Austrian EBEL league and Red Bull Munich from the German DEL league are, so far, the new clubs for the 2015–16 Champions Hockey League.
Linz and Munich have qualified by finishing second in their respective regular-season standings. As both clubs were runner-ups behind A-License (“Founding”) clubs (Red Bull Salzburg and Adler Mannheim, respectively) their second positions have earned them Champions Hockey League B-License status for the upcoming season.
Apart from the 26 Founding Clubs, the following clubs have also so far qualified for next season’s competition:
- HC Ocelari Trinec (CZE, B-License) – regular season winner of Tipsport Extraliga
- Skelleftea AIK (SWE, B-License) – regular season winner of the SHL
- HC Kosice (SVK, C-License) – regular season winner of Slovak Tipsport Extraliga
- Stavanger Oilers (NOR, C-License) – regular season winner of the GET Ligaen
- HC Neman Grodno (BLR, C-License) – winner of the IIHF Continental Cup
The first four teams participated in the CHL's inaugural season, while Neman Grodno, who went undefeated through the 2015 IIHF Continental Cup Super Final, is the Champions Hockey League’s first notable venture to Eastern Europe.
This brings the current total of teams for 2015–16 to 33. The number of teams competing in the Champions Hockey League in its second year has been expanded to 48 and, as such, the number of C-Licenses has been increased to 10.
The C-Licenses, also called Wild Cards, are awarded by the CHL to top teams from the five “Challenge Leagues”, which are ranked below the six Founding Leagues. As was the case in 2014–15, C-Licenses will go to the top leagues of Norway, Slovakia, Denmark, Great Britain and France.
The 10 C-License clubs will join the 12 B-License (in principle the national champions and regular season winners of the six founding leagues) and 26 A-License (founding clubs) clubs for a total of 48 teams, which will be divided into 16 groups of three.
The Group Stage of the 2015–16 season will begin on 20 August and finish on 6 September. Each team will play four games – one home and one away against the other two teams in its group. The first- and second-placed teams in each group will then advance to the Playoff Stage.
With 32 teams in the playoffs, five rounds will be required to determine a champion. The first four rounds will all be two-game, home-and-away, total-goal series, similar to this season. The playoffs will begin on 22 September and finish with a one-game final on 9 February.