Champions Series
European Elite League Champions 2010-11
by Bruce Peter on Apr 20, 2011 3:00 PM EDT
in Champions Series
Yesterday, Eisbaren Berlin captured the DEL Championship, sweeping regular season champion Grizzly Adams Wolfsburg in the final. The result was significant, not only because Berlin won the championship in the same year they won the first ever pre-season European Trophy tournament, but because it officially marked the end of the European club hockey season. All that's left now are a couple of international tournaments, most significantly the IIHF World Championships in Bratislava and Kosice, Slovakia. I'll be doing recaps for the top leagues as part of my off-season coverage, but I figured I'd get a head start on this by simply offering up a list of the champions for the various leagues. The plan is to give each team a full feature as well (playoff champions only).
As you can see, three teams won their league's coveted 'double' this year, while Eisbaren Berlin pulled off a unique one (and so did HV71, although I'm not sure the European Trophy group stage really counts). If there were a Champions Hockey League, in front of you you'd be seeing a majority of the participants for next year. Instead, it's just a list of what were the best teams on the continent this season, and nothing more.
0 commentsKanada-malja Champions: TPS Turku
by Bruce Peter on Jul 27, 2010 8:00 AM EDT
in Champions Series
TPS Turku: Your 2009-10 Kanada-majla Champions. Photo used by permission of HC TPS Turku.
In a 14 team league, winning a championship isn't nearly as difficult as in a 30 team league, or a 60 team circuit like the Canadian Hockey League's Memorial Cup. The Kanada-malja, translated as Canada Cup and awarded to the playoff champion of the SM-Liiga, is however one of the more celebrated club championships in the world. It's the top prize in Finnish club hockey, the national prize for arguably the second most hockey mad nation on the planet. The trophy was donated by Finnish immigrants from Canada, which is where it gets it's unique name, and the trophy has been given out to the winner of the Finland's club championship since 1976, the year that the more famous Canada Cup was first played. In Finland, the most prolific club since then has been TPS Turku, but the team had experienced eight straight years without a championship. This isn't exactly unheard of territory... but with a precarious hold on the most Kanada-malja Championships ever (9 total to Tappara Tampere's 8), there was starting to be a definite feeling of a championship drought in Turku. For their fans, 2009-10 marked the world righting itself once again.
The glory years of TPS were a 13 year period that bookended the 1990s: 1988-89 through to 2000-2001. In this time period, TPS introduced the hockey world to young stars such as Saku Koivu, Miikka Kiprusoff, Sami Salo, German Titov, Karlis Skrastins, Antero Niittymaki, Antti Aalto, Mikko Koivu and Fredrik Norenna. More importantly from a club point of view, they also reeled off an incredible eight championships and three times were runners-up. The hangover from this run, however, nearly sunk the team. Financial troubles hit the team, and the prospect pool dried up in a hurry. There were players drafted from TPS in the mid-2000s, but the best of the bunch was likely Lauri Korpikoski. A finalist run in 2003-04 under Jukka Koivu's coaching (Saku and Mikko's father) was the exception to the rule, as losing out in the so called "charity round" of the playoffs was the norm (7 vs. 10 and 8 vs. 9 have to 'play-in' to the SM-Liiga 8 team playoff round). Even the return of Hannu Jortikka as head coach from 2005-07 couldn't elevate the team above mediocrity. Jortikka had won six championships in two previous stints as head coach, in only seven seasons.
Even in 2009-10, TPS were longshots headed into the playoffs, placing as the 6th seed with a 25-6-2-25 regular season record (W-OTW-OTL-L). Narrowly avoiding the charity round which had been their fate in recent years, they somehow rattled off an incredible 12-3 record against 3 teams with better records than them in the regular season, including the regular season leaders (and defending Kanada-malja champion) JYP.
Minnesota Whitecaps: Clarkson Cup Champions
by Bruce Peter on Jun 17, 2010 9:00 AM EDT
in Champions Series
Will the twenty-sixth Governor General of Canada's donation to the world of hockey prove a worthy companion to what the sixth Governor General presented way back in 1893? And maybe some actual good will actually come out of the disastrous NHL lockout of 2004-05 after all? (On a side note, no one likes to mention that year at all in hockey circles anymore. It's impossible for me to forgive and forget for that one, and you'll see it continually brought up in the future here at Puck Worlds.)
Back in those dark days of no professional hockey on TV save for a few American Hockey League games, then Governor General of Canada Adirenne Clarkson proposed that since the Stanley Cup would not be awarded to the top men's club team in the world, that perhaps it should be given to the top women's club team, since they were still competing. It didn't happen of course, but out of that very public discourse came the idea for Clarkson to follow in Lord Stanley of Preston's tradition and present a trophy specifically to the top women's club team in the world. There had been trophies that had been awarded in the past to women's clubs, but often they were simply named after the league they were awarded by. The Clarkson Cup represents a true championship trophy for women's clubs, and could be the start of a new tradition that becomes familiar to hockey fans.
We're in the infancy of the championship, but in 2009 it got off to a familiar start: a team from Montreal won the very first Clarkson Cup, just like the 1893 AAA Montreal club. The Montreal Stars, featuring three members of 2010 Gold Medalists Team Canada (Caroline Ouellete, Marie-Philip Poulin and Kim St. Pierre), triumphed over the Minnesota Whitecaps 3-1 that year. But unlike the Stanley Cup, which was 24 years old by the time an American team (the Seattle Metropolitans) won the trophy, the Clarkson didn't take long at all to make a trip across the border.
Chicago Blackhawks: Stanley Cup Champions
by Bruce Peter on Jun 10, 2010 9:01 AM EDT
in Champions Series
People who know me even moderately know that when it comes to the NHL, I'm a massive Montreal Canadiens fan. I bleed bleu, blanc, et rouge and nothing will ever change that. It's the pure fanboy in me, I caught the bug watching Patrick Roy, Guy Carbonneau, Chris Chelios and the rest in the late 1980s and ealry 1990s, and every season since 1993 has been pretty disappointing in the end. This year, however, is a little bit different.
Back when I was a young boy, I also developed a much smaller affinity for the Chicago Blackhawks. There was no overlying reason for it, perhaps the most obvious reason was watching playoff games broadcast out of the old, ridiculously noisy Chicago Stadium. They were a good team back then, too, and being in the Campbell Conference, they never had to face the Habs so there was no reason to hate them. Denis Savard was fun to watch, and when he was traded for Chelios, the Blackhawks made a memorable run for the Stanley Cup in 1992 on the backs of Chelios, young star Jeremy Roenick, and the goaltending of Ed Belfour. Dominik Hasek made his debut back then as well, and I vividly remember his playoff debut in relief of Belfour, who struggled mightily in his first Finals against the Pittsburgh Penguins. It also helped that I had a great experience at the 1991 Canada Cup, when during an exhibition game in Saskatoon, Jeremy Roenick took his time to sign autographs for every single young fan he could. Fans of my generation have generally had a negative opinion of Roenick's personality and on-ice antics (unless they were already fans of the team he played for), but he was always gold in my eyes for that gesture back in Saskatoon.
I'm going to be running a series on the various Champions of the hockey world this past year throughout the summer months, and there's no better place to start than with the ultimate club champions: the 2009-10 Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks.
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