All three Austrian teams headed into last Tuesday's Champions Hockey League matches staring elimination in the face. But three big wins kept KAC Klagenfurt, Red Bull Salzburg and the Vienna Capitals all alive going into Gameday 6.
"As a league, we are really happy with the results of the Austrian teams. Within the competition we appreciate how seriously they take it and their effort," said EBEL CEO Christian Feichtinger. "We're crossing our fingers that they can prolong their stay in these 'do or die' games."
All three teams are now each one win away from advancement, with Salzburg hosting Grizzlys Wolfsburg, and the others travelling to Switzerland - Klagenfurt to Zurich to take on the ZSC Lions and Vienna to nearby Zug. None of them have easy tasks, but all three go in with the confidence of having beaten those same teams last week.
"It shows the quality of the hockey in the EBEL, and how it can match the European standard," noted the EBEL CEO after the teams from his league won on Gameday 5. "We've developed our product so that our teams are professional in a European sense. The whole league is proud of them for beating teams that you expect to be of a higher level."
"CHL is the highest level our teams can reach, and shows the quality of our own league"Christian Feichtinger
The EBEL is one of the CHL's six founding leagues, and the idea of European competition excited them from the very beginning.
"For us, it's the peak tournament and highest level we can reach with club hockey," said Feichtinger. "I talked to Klagenfurt's coach before the ZSC Lions' game, and he said he wants to be in the tournament every year! We work hard to promote this league across out channel because it's the highest level our teams can reach, and it also shows the quality of our own league. So there are only positives for us."
Regardless of what happens in next week's games, the EBEL has already been making changes to its own structure to have its teams ready for European competition.
"In the EBEL, exactly the same casebook is applied as in the CHL, so we can have our teams playing with the same rules and they're prepared in the best possible way," he explained. "We've also changed our qualification process. Now our three places will be allocated first to the regular-season winners (after 44 games); secondly winner of the pick round (after 54 games), and finally the playoff winners. So we have more value on the regular season, and the teams really appreciate that too."