Champions Hockey League (CHL) - weekend 1

After 32 games the first weekend of the CHL is finished with every team playing twice in the Europe-wide competition.

Only five teams were about to secure maximum points with two regulation wins out of two and all of them are from different nations. They were Malmö Redhawks (SWE), Red Bull München (GER), Kärpät Oulu (FIN), EV Zug (SWI) and HC Pilsen (CZE). Swede Lars Bryggman has five goals from the two games with the Redhawks whilst Top Scorer with six points is Dane, Mads Christensen (in photo) playing for Red Bull München.

Current CHL champions, JYP Jyväskylä from Finland were beaten away from home by HC Pilsen, the Czech team who Milan Gulas, formerly of Färjestad BK, now plays for. However, they did win their first road game against Slovakian champions, Banská Bystrica.

Perhaps the greatest surprise of the opening weekend was the double win for Italian side, HC Bolzano who hosted Swedish giants, Skellefteå AIK and then former Finnish champions, Helsinki IFK.

The winners of the Austrian/ international EBEL league were leading against the Swedish silver medalists until 5:39 was left on the clock and new signing Juhamatti Aaltonen found the net for the visitors. But a goalless Over Time meant penalties. And amazingly, 26 year old Italian/ Canadian, Alex Petan was the only player to score from the spot giving the unlikeliest of wins to the Italian club.

The Finnish team did the even worse, losing 4-1 in regulation to the Foxes.

So the EBEL champions go into the second round of play (6/7 September) in top place in their group. They know that home and away wins against the Polish newcomers, GK Tychy, could be enough to see them through to the knockout stages.

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