The European Trophy 2013 will once again start in the middle of August and will feature the same 32 teams from 7 different countries as in 2012. With respect to the tight game schedule in the respective national leagues because of the Olympics 2014 in Sochi, the Round Robin 2013 will be played out until the middle of September. The Red Bulls Salute – the final tournament of the European Trophy – will again take place in the middle of December. In total the teams compete for 390.000 Euros in prize money.
“We are very happy that we have the same strong group of teams together again,” says tournament director Bo Lennartsson. “Without a doubt you can consider our competition as the number one tournament in European club ice hockey.”
The European Trophy 2013 will be played with 32 teams in the same four divisions, but the teams will switch their home compared to last season. Therefore the North Division will consist of all European Trophy Champions of the past years with Eisbären Berlin (2010), EC Red Bull Salzburg (2011) and Lulea Hockey (2012) as well as the current Czech Extraleague leader HC Skoda Plzen.
The East Division sees lots of traditional European ice hockey teams with Tappara, Djurgardens IF and HC Pardubice, just to mention a few of them, as well as current Swiss regular season leaders SC Bern and HC Fribourg-Gottéron.
The West Division contains the two big Helsinki rivals Jokerit and HIFK as well as Swedish giant Färjestad BK and Frölunda Indians, German top club Adler Mannheim and Swiss defending Champions ZSC Lions.
In the South division Czech Republic’s most traditional club Sparta Praha will meet Swedish Elitserien leaders HV71, the best current Austrian team UPC Vienna Capitals and also KHL’s HC Slovan Bratislava.
Bo Lennartsson: “Our tournament is not only improving in terms of the level of hockey, marketing and merchandising revenue, we are also building long term relations between the clubs through positive and very interesting exchanges of ideas. We are not only talking within our group but also to lots of other European clubs in different countries. This helps us every day to move forward with the development of European club ice hockey.”
You can view the groups at our Team page.
Source: European Trophy – www.europeantrophy.com
