While three Czech sides have made it to the Champions Hockey League Semi-Finals, and Sparta Prague made the final in 2016, no team from the Extraliga has lifted the European Trophy so far. At today’s pre-season press conference in Prague, the four teams hoping to do just that looked ahead to the new season.
CHL CEO Martin Baumann opened the press conference by giving the gathered Czech journalists statistics about the past five seasons of the Champions Hockey League – and some numbers about the attendances of Czech teams in 2018/19. New board member Petr Syrovátko Jr. also made a short address, before it was over to the teams to look ahead to the new season.
The Czech Ice Hockey Association also announced that it has acknowledged the importance of representing the country on the European stage. To this end, they have agreed to help each team taking part with €20,000 each to cover initial expenses in the Group Stage.
Marek Chmiel (Head Coach): "For us we want to improve on last season in the CHL. Our goal is to play much better, and make sure we get points to help the Czech Republic in the league ranking. We need to stay humble however, as there are some really good teams in our group. I won’t comment on the strength of the teams, but for our fans I’m happy that they have some new places to travel outside of Scandinavia! They have organised a trip to Belarus and Finland that is already sold out!"
Patrik Augusta (Head Coach): "In our group we have new teams in Belfast and Augsburg. Regarding Belfast, we saw at the World Championships how strong Great Britain are; and Augsburg is a partner city of Liberec so there’s some mutual cooperation going on. We also have former champions in Luleå as well, so they’ll be a very high quality team."
Ladislav Čihák (Head Coach): "Our group is probably more difficult than last season, but it’s always difficult – there are normally at least three teams fighting to get into the two playoff places. We want to succeed again, it will be also a really tough test for us, and while we want to go as far as possible we know it won’t be easy."
Tomáš Martinec (Head Coach): "We appreciate being in the CHL, and it’s again a success for us to have qualified for the Champions Hockey League. We’ll do everything we can to finally get out of the Group Stage and into the playoffs."