2020–21 Champions Hockey League
The 2020–21 Champions Hockey League (CHL) was planned to be the seventh season of Europe’s top club tournament. It was set to include 32 teams, all qualifying on sporting merit. The six founding leagues would have sent between three and five teams each, based on a three-year league ranking, and seven “challenge leagues” would have one team each. An extra spot would have gone to the 2019–20 IIHF Continental Cup winner.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a revised plan proposed starting directly with a 32-team playoff in October. However, with the situation not improving enough, the CHL board cancelled the tournament before any games were played.
Under the planned format, besides the Continental Cup champion, 24 teams from the six founding leagues and the national champions from Slovakia, Norway, Denmark, France, Belarus, Great Britain and Poland could have qualified. The qualification rules were adjusted due to the pandemic: for the Austrian Hockey League, teams were picked in a specific order; Great Britain was an exception since the EIHL crowns its national champion based on the regular season, not playoffs.
Because many leagues had to cancel their seasons early, places usually reserved for playoff champions were given to the next best regular-season teams, or in Austria’s case, the next best regular-season team. In the EIHL, the team leading the regular season at the time of cancellation would receive the CHL spot.
HC ’05 Banská Bystrica had qualified as Slovakia’s regular-season champion but withdrew due to arena issues and was replaced by HC Neman Grodno. On 15 September, Cardiff Devils withdrew from the league because of the EIHL season suspension, and no new team replaced them.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 09:38 (CET).