The start of the 2017-18 season also means the start of the group stage of the 4th Champions Hockey League season. For Hungarian fans Balázs Sebők looks to be an integral part to the success of Finnish club KalPa in the CHL.
The Champions Hockey League has decided to reduce the number of teams participating in the groups stage from 64 down to 32 teams. The six founding nations (Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Germany and Austria) are represented between 3 to 5 teams with the Continental Cup champions also receiving a spot. Unlike in the first 3 seasons, founding member clubs to not qualify.
Balázs Sebők and KalPa qualified for this seasons CHL because they finished runners up in the Liiga and hope to improve on last seasons finish of making it to the quarter finals. Making it out of the group stage will not be easy as they will face Czech champion Kometa Brno, Swedish semifinalists Malmö Redhawks, and Norwegian champions Stavanger Oilers.
“We are not expecting too much from the CHL right now, we are trying to go game by game. If I had to say something we need to win our first game and then go from there. We have played four games already so we will be taking these game seriously.” said Balázs Sebők, he also talked about how the CHL has changed throughout the past few seasons. “Most teams in the CHL are very happy to be playing in the tournament and participation is based on the previous seasons accomplishments. Because of this the CHL has changed since the first season. We will see in our first game how much the fans like the changes.”
