With four games played by each of the 44 Champions Hockey League clubs, Efraim Larsson has taken an interesting look at the statistics to see how the clubs from the 11 participating leagues have done against one another.

by Efraim Larsson

We are four rounds into the group stage of the Champions Hockey League and, since I have a huge interest in statistics, I find it very exciting to see how the different leagues are doing against each other. Finding out which league is actually “the best in Europe” is of course not what I’m trying to solve with these stats I’m about to present. It’s mostly a fun and interesting analysis.

So far 88 games have been played and six teams are still undefeated after four games played. Of those six teams, three are from the Swedish Hockey League, two from the Finnish Liiga, and one from the Austrian-based EBEL.

When we take a look at the clubs that hold first place in the 11 groups we can see that the SHL is also among the best here. The list includes two ties for the moment (Frölunda Gothenburg and Genève-Servette in Group C and Luleå Hockey and Lukko Rauma in Group K), but as you can see, only five out of 11 participating leagues have a team in first place in any group: four clubs from the SHL, three from the Swiss NLA and two each from the Liiga, EBEL, and Czech Extraliga.

To take the analysis a further step, I think the most interesting and the most reliable element to compare the leagues is to take a look at the winning percentages of the leagues' teams. Just to compare the points taken won’t give us an accurate comparison since there aren’t the same number of teams from the different leagues participating in the tournament.

The winning percentage indicates what percentage of games that each team won, whether in regulation time, overtime or a shootout, and in this column the SHL and Liiga are clearly the best leagues. In the standings below I’ve sorted the leagues after just winning percentage and you can find that column bolded to the right. The points percentage is slightly different as it shows the available points each team gained. With three points up for grabs in each game, a team that averages 1.5 points per game will be 50.00 percent.

League-by-league statistics after four Game Days

CT = Country, GP = Games Played, GF = Goals For, GA = Goals Against, GD = Goal Difference, GFA = Goals-For Average, GAA = Goals-Against Average, SO = Shutouts, GSO = Games Shut Out, W = Wins, OTW = Overtime Wins, SOW = Shootout Wins, OTL = Overtime Losses, SOL = Shootout Losses, P = Points, P/TEAM = Points-per-Team Average, W-% = Winning Percentage, P-% = Points Percentage

The SHL and Liiga have taken by far the most points so far (68 and 67), but keep in mind that these leagues have eight teams each in the tournament, compared to the EBEL which has only four teams participating. Both the Swedish and Finnish leagues share a winning percentage of 71.88% after 23 wins in 32 games, while the SHL has a slightly higher point percentage. They are also the best leagues in both goal scoring and defence with their Goals-For and Goals-Against Average.

In Game Days 1 and 2 the teams from Liiga won 13 of 16 games and took 39 out of 48 points (81.25 winning percentage) but just won 10 games (four in overtime or shootout) in Game Days 3 and 4, resulting in 28 points (62.50 W-%). The SHL went the other way, from 11 wins and 31 points (68.75 W-%) in Game Days 1 and 2 to 12 wins and 37 points (75.00 W-%) in Game Days 3 and 4.

The Austrian EBEL might be one of the leagues that impress me the most just because of their low amount of participating teams (four), their high winning percentage (62.50%, third-best) and points-per-team average (7.25, third-best). This is despite their actually pretty low goals-for average of 2.44 (fifth-best) and the fact that all four clubs share their groups with SHL teams (Red Bull Salzburg and HC Bolzano play against Liiga teams in their groups as well). They went from a 50.00 winning percentage in Game Days 1 and 2 (four wins in eight games) to six wins in eight games and a 75.00 winning percentage in Game Days 3 and 4. Quite a little story of success, isn’t it?

On the other hand, if you take a look at the German league DEL you can see that they haven’t started the tournament in a good way. Just five victories and a total of 16 points in 24 games isn’t something to brag about, and of the six participating teams two clubs still haven’t earned any points yet. As you can see in the standings above, the DEL holds the worst goal difference (-45), third-lowest GFA and fourth-highest GAA, and on top of that they have been shut out in five games. In their defence, both the Hamburg Freezers and Krefeld Pinguine share groups with clubs from the SHL and one from Liiga (Luleå and Lukko in Hamburg's group, Skellefteå AIK and IFK Helsinki in Krefeld's – all of them are undefeated). The clubs from the DEL managed to raise their winning percentage of 16.67% in Game Days 1 and 2 to 25.00% in Game Days 3 and 4. Is there another boost coming on Game Day 5?

Two clubs are representing the Norwegian Get Ligaen in the CHL – the Stavanger Oilers and Vålerenga Oslo – and it’s pretty interesting to compare the statistics of these two teams. Stavanger are tied for second place in Group E with five points while Vålerenga still haven’t picked up any points, but they have been close with three straight one-goal defeats.

Game Days 1 and 2

Game Days 3 and 4

The 11 first-place teams in each group will qualify for the round of 16, along with the five best second-place teams.

Four of the five second-seeded teams that currently have the most points are Finnish. If the group stage were to finish today, it means that the Liiga would have five teams in the playoffs, the SHL four, NLA three, and EBEL and Czech Extraliga two each. In terms of percentage, that would mean 64.50% of the clubs from Liiga would qualify for the playoffs, 50.00% of the SHL, NLA and EBEL teams and 33.34% of the Czech clubs.

But there are still two rounds of games to be played, and there are factors that could cause the numbers to change. In particular, there are five groups that contain both Swedish and Finnish clubs, but none of these clubs have faced each other yet. In those five groups, the Swedish and Finnish teams will meet each other in each of the last two games, which will surely cause the percentages of those leagues to gravitate slightly toward 50 percent. A lot can still happen to re-arrange the standings. This is hockey we are talking about!

Did you know…

…that 52 of the 88 games so far have ended up in a home team win?
…that 11 games have gone to shootout and that a total of 118 penalty shots have been taken, resulting in 45 goals?
…that the home team has scored the first goal in 51 of those 88 games?
…that only three of the 12 shutouts have been by the away team?
…that the largest amount of goals in a single period in a CHL game is six, and has happened three times?