Red Bull Salzburg and Bílí Tygři Liberec will both be looking for their first wins of the new Champions Hockey League season on Saturday after suffering defeats on Thursday. On home ice, Salzburg fell 5-2 to Kölner Haie, while Liberec lost 6-3 to Finnish champions and past winners of the CHL Tappara Tampere.

This is Salzburg’s 11th CHL season but, amazingly, this will only be their second game against a Czech club, having lost 2-1 at home to Sparta Prague two years ago. Similarly, this is Liberec’s sixth CHL season but their first-ever game against an Austrian opponent.

Salzburg played a relatively even game against Cologne but were put behind the eight-ball with two quick powerplay goals on the same penalty late in the first period. Therefore, penalty-killing, and staying out of the penalty box in general against a skilled Czech side, is an area of their game they want to clean up. Mario Huber and Peter Schneider each had a goal and an assist. Huber led the team with 23:44 of ice time and defenceman Oliver Gapineau had four shots on goal.

Like Salzburg, Liberec were also very much in their opening game for most of the night but were undone by the powerplay of Tappara, which connected three times on Thursday – although Liberec also scored one shorthanded. Jakub Rychlovský led the offence with a goal and an assist, Radan Lenc also scored and had a team-high five shots on goal, and veteran defenceman Radim Šimek led all skaters in ice time, logging 21:48.

One team will skate away with a Game Day 2 win in their book, who will it be?