Euro Hockey Challenge is an annual ice hockey tournament for 12 best teams of Europe. The tournament took place for the first time in 2011.
Format of the tournament[]
Teams are divided into three divisions:
- Central Division
- Nordic Division
- Continental Division
In every division are 4 teams. They play twice each other (six games in total per team). After all games in every division, all statistics are summed up into one table of all divisions. The best team of this table is the Euro Hockey Challenge champion.
For the 2021 tournament, Austrian team was replaced by Belarus for the third week of the tournament due to same dates of the third week of this tournament and the World Championship Division IA. Although the World Championship Division IA was canceled this year, Belarus still replaced Austria in the third week.
In 2021, Finland did not participate in the Euro Hockey Challenge due to COVID-19 pandemic, so there were only three teams in the Nordic Division.
There were also several changes in the Continental Division for the 2021 edition. France was replaced by Belarus for its games against Russia and France did not play its games against Latvia. Latvia played only its two games against Switzerland. As a result, Russia played only its two games against Switzerland and two games against Belarus and Switzerland was the only team in the Continental Division to play all its games.
Participants[]
Central Division | Nordic Division | Continental Division |
---|---|---|
Austria | Denmark | Belarus |
Belarus | Norway | France |
Czech Republic | Sweden | Latvia |
Germany | Russia | |
Slovakia | Switzerland |
Euro Hockey Challenge standings[]
Year | Winner | Runner-up | 3rd place |
---|---|---|---|
2011 | Finland | Sweden | Czech Republic |
2012 | Czech Republic | Switzerland | Finland |
2013 | Sweden | Finland | Norway |
2014 | Finland | Czech Republic | Sweden |
2015 | Czech Republic | Sweden | Finland |
2016 | Finland | Belarus | Czech Republic |
2017 | Switzerland | Finland | Czech Republic |
2018 | Czech Republic | Finland | Sweden |
2019 | Czech Republic | Russia | Sweden |
2020 | canceled due to COVID-19 pandemic | ||
2021 | Czech Republic | Switzerland | Slovakia |
Medal table[]
Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Medals |
---|---|---|---|---|
Czech Republic | 5 | 1 | 3 | 9 |
Finland | 3 | 3 | 2 | 8 |
Sweden | 1 | 2 | 3 | 6 |
Switzerland | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
Belarus | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Russia | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Norway | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
Slovakia | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |